This Day in Baseball History (Yankee Stadium Opens)

April 18, 1923—In what would become a ritual that, for all its increasing frequency, never lost an ounce of excitement, Babe Ruth put on a show for the 74,217 fans who came to see their hero in his new habitat, belting a three-run homer against the team that dealt him away, giving New York a 4-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox in the first game ever played at Yankee Stadium.

For all the Babe’s astonishing achievements, he was, after all, just one man. But the Yankees continually picked up from Boston an excellent supporting cast, several of whom ended up in the Hall of Fame besides Ruth.

The House That Boston Built
At the start of their 1923 season, the Bombers had in place much of the nucleus that would dominate the league through the end of the decade courtesy of Sox owner Harry Frazee, as four of eight regular position players and six of eight pitchers were Boston castoffs. 

Good thing Frazee sold the Sox, by then safely esconced in last place, that August: otherwise, Beantown fans might have done what their forbears in colonial times did—tarred and feathered the theatrical producer.

Despite being nicknamed “The House That Ruth Built,” then, the stadium might just as aptly be called “The House That Boston Built” for the major players picked up by the Yankees in that decade and the next seven ones. Look beyond Ruth, if you can, and consider the following:

* Waite Hoyt, after two Sox seasons with a combined 10-12 record, ended up with the Bombers for 1921, where he proceeded to enjoy the most productive stretch of his 237-win career—155 wins against 96 losses in nine seasons. He was especially clutch in the World Series with a 6-3 record and an E.R.A. of 1.62.

* Herb Pennock went seven years with Boston and another three with the Philadelphia Athletics before the Yankees picked him up from the Sox. He achieved his greatest success with the Yankees, including two 20-win seasons.

* Red Ruffing consumed far more of the Red Sox patience with fewer results than Hoyt, lasting seven seasons in which he compiled only 39 wins and 93 losses, before the Sox tired of him early in 1930. The righthander went on to become the stopper of Joe McCarthy’s managerial tenure, as his toughness finally began to show results on the mound, including five of six successful Game 1 appearances in the World Series.

* Sparky Lyle came over to the Yankees in a trade for Danny Cater. As a matter of courtesy to the team that gave him his start in baseball, Lyle recalled 30 years later, he went to say thanks and goodbye to Sox GM Dick O’Connell. Perhaps fearing that Lyle would kick his rear end for the trade, O’Connell didn’t come out of his office. It was symptomatic of the GM’s inability to glimpse into the future, for this ended up being one of the most lopsided transactions in the history of the two teams, with Lyle providing several seasons of much-needed relief pitching (including his 1977 Cy Young Award season) for the Bombers while Cater hit a very quiet .262 with 14 homers as a reserve for three seasons with the Sox.

* Wade Boggs could be a cranky sort, and he had his share of other failings (remember Margo Adams?). But his patience at the plate during his five seasons (including two strike-shortened) with the Bombers influenced the team even after he had moved on. He could never win a World Series with Boston (which let him go as a free agent after ’92), but did for the Yankees in 1996, producing one of the great post-victory moments—riding a horse (lent on the spot by one of New York’s finest) around the stadium.

A Uniquely Transformative Player
Still, all in all, it’s the Babe that gave his name to “The Curse” that bedeviled Boston for more than 80 seasons. That’s not surprising, because in the entire history of baseball, I believe, there were really only two players who truly transformed the sport, both on and off the field—Jackie Robinson and Ruth.

It’s an interesting pairing, because while Robinson’s heroic breaking of the color line has earned him just and lasting fame, his play within the lines itself—fast, daring, and fiercely intelligent (his eyes never left Bobby Thomson for an instant when the latter hit the climactic 1951 homer at “The Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff,” because the Dodger hoped against hope that he’d catch the Giant hero missing a bag on his circuit round the field)—harked, in certain ways, back to the style wrought to perfection by the New York Giants’ scrappy manager John J. McGraw.

Ruth’s home-run heroics saved baseball after the Black Sox World Series scandal, and began to put it on the road to the global phenomenon it is today, as 50,000-60,000 fans would often turn out to see him and other barnstorming American all-stars on their 1934 tour of Japan.

His home runs effectively ended the “deadball” era in which home runs were much harder to come by. (In Frank “Home Run” Baker’s biggest power year, 1913, he only slugged 12 round-trippers; contrast that with Ruth, who slammed 29 in 1919—before he went to the Yankees.) They also shifted the game away from the low-scoring, pitching- and strategy-dominated contests that McGraw loved, much to the latter’s annoyance.

A New Baseball Entertainment Emporium
The Babe’s exploits also put the Yankees on a collision course with their older Polo Grounds co-tenants, the Giants. So long as the Yankees were the figurative poor relation, the Giants didn’t mind them around.

But in Ruth’s first Bomber season, when the Yankees only fielded a third-place team yet still outdrew the Giants at the gate by more than 300,000, the Giants grew jealous and resentful, and the Yankees knew it was time to search for a new home.

I find it a fascinating coincidence that the first spot the Yankees wanted for the eventual “House That Ruth Built” was the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, on Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th Streets. After all, Ruth himself at age seven had been placed by his tavern-owner father in St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a combined orphanage-reform school. (His parents didn’t even visit on Sundays or on holidays. Not surprisingly, the boy began to act up, and but for the school’s disciplinarian, Brother Matthias, who worked with the youngster on his baseball skills, George Herman Ruth Jr. would have been what we call today an “at-risk youth.”)

The site the Yankees eventually chose was directly across the Harlem River from their old hated landlords, a 10-acre tract in the western section of the Bronx between 157th and 161st Streets. The purchase price of the estate of William Waldorf Astor--$675,000—was considered a mite steep at the time, but once they began to draw fans it looked like a bargain.

Long before Pat Riley brought his “Showtime” style east from the L.A. Lakers, Ruth created his own brand of entertainment. It became a cliché that it was more exciting to watch him strike out than it was for others to hit home runs.

And plenty of people came out to watch him that day, including New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, who threw out the first ball; fellow New York Irish politico Jim Farley, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s future campaign manager, who would rarely miss a home opener for the remaining 53 years of his life; and John Philip Sousa, who led the Seventh Regiment Band.

Pioneers in Sports Marketing, Too
One other man made it possible for the force behind “The House That Ruth Built” even to have a house of his own after his playing days were through: his agent, Christy Walsh, a pioneer in sports licensing. Early in his Yankee career, the Bambino had made a then-hefty $50,000 for the year but, because of his huge appetites—for booze, broads, cigars, big expensive cars, you name it—he had saved barely a penny.

That’s where Walsh came in—though Ruth didn’t know it was Walsh at first.

Starting in 1921, Walsh had created his own syndicate, with his particular specialty being a major star commenting in a special ghostwritten newspaper column on a World Series game—sometimes with the star nowhere to be found.

As sportswriter Shirley Povich remembered years later, this was true regarding The Babe himself on one occasion. With Ruth hospitalized for appendicitis in 1924, just as he was about to “write” about the Washington Senators, even his “ghost” figured that there was no point in staying around. Not Walsh, who promptly began dictating copy for the Babe: “As I lie here, in New York’s Emergency Hospital…”

If Walsh sounds a bit like the type of character that Lee Tracy played in those 1930s films—the fast-talking newspaper or promoter—you’ve got the idea. And here’s further evidence, in an incident recounted in Steven Gaines’ The Sky’s the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan:

In 1922, Ruth kept putting off Walsh’s entreaties to meet and discuss his finances. Finally, one day, the slugger found a deliveryman at the door of his Ansonia apartment with something he couldn’t resist: a case of beer. By the time the deliveryman had gotten the cherished libations inside, he revealed himself to be lawyer Walsh and promised to make Ruth $1,000 in 60 days.

Walsh did all of that, and more. According to a Bernard Condon article in the latest edition of Forbes’ “Sportsmoney: Baseball” special issue, Walsh persuaded Ruth to put $150,000 into a trust fund he couldn’t touch. This set Ruth up splendidly in his retirement years.

End of an Era
As the Bronx Bombers head into their final season in their old ballpark, I have less-than-mixed feelings about ownership’s decision to raze the old stadium and build a new one in the former Macomb Dam and Mullaly parks.

It’s not just that those two parks are being demolished, or that total public subsidies will amount to $833 million of the Yanks’ $1.9 billion cost for the new structure, or that all of that snail’s-pace construction is seriously inconveniencing local residents, or that ticket prices will undoubtedly jump yet again, for reasons unrelated to the signing of yet another savior who’ll bring the team the World Series that has eluded them for the last seven years.

No, it comes down to this: Yankee Stadium is a cathedral of sports, a ground made hallow by Ruth and a host of other sung and unsung players since then. It was renovated in 1974 and 1975, so it’s not like it was a terribly decrepit structure or that fans were abandoning the team in droves. In fact, the team’s value now stands at $1.3 billion, according to the “Sportsmoney” issue of Forbes.

Ruth lies buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, N.Y., where my maternal grandparents and so many of my other relatives are as well. Starting next year, much of the magic he brought into being with him on this day 85 years also will also be buried.