newcomers wound up in the requisite foolish situations, guarding their shoes during the night from the porters, who surely would try to steal them, counting off the towns loudly toward Fayetteville. Ruth fell for everything. He spent his night with his left arm in the hammock over his upper berth, told that it was a special conditioning contraption for pitchers rather than a place to store clothes.
Fayetteville was a warm marvel. The temperature was 70 degrees. The men in town already were wearing straw hats in the middle of March. How can this be? Everything was a marvel. The Orioles checked into the Hotel Lafayette, where Ruth was fascinated by the elevator, riding up and down for days, leaving the door open, sticking his head out—watch it!—pulling back just in time to avoid serious injury. He was up in the mornings at five, familiar time for St. Mary’s, early for everywhere else, and down at the train station to watch the activity. He walked early to the Cape Fear Fairgrounds, where practice was held in a field next to the racetrack. He ate prodigious amounts of food at every sitting, buckwheat cakes piled into a syrup-drenched tower, gone in a moment, seconds on the way.
He was as raw as any kid who ever had stepped off any farm into this situation. He was very happy.
“He looked like a big, overgrown Indian,” Fred Parent, a former big league shortstop brought to the camp to work with the younger players, said. “He really had a dark complexion. He seemed to be really a happy-go-lucky kind of kid, made acquaintance easily. He had a really big voice. You’d think he weighed 500 pounds with that voice, and it grew bigger as he grew older.”
His nickname, the nice one, the one that would stick and become famous, arrived early. There are assorted versions of the story about when and how it arrived during the camp, but the one that is tidiest and, again, maybe even true has interim leader Steinman telling the veterans to take it easy with the new kid because “he’s one of Dunnie’s babes.” Rodger Pippen and Jesse Linthicum of the
Baltimore Sun
were in camp, heard Steinman use the word, and began to refer to “Babe Ruth” in their reports. It was not an uncommon nickname at the time. The babe officially was the Babe.
Some of the first newspaper stories that mentioned his name came after the first scrimmage at the fairgrounds. The team was divided in two, the Buzzards against the Sparrows, and he played a left-handed shortstop and pitched a few innings. He also hit the longest home run in Fayetteville history.
A white post had been planted at the edge of right field to mark a spot where Jim Thorpe, the decathlon champion in the 1912 Olympics, now with the New York Giants, once had hit a ball while playing in the Carolina League. In the seventh inning against the Sparrows, Ruth hit a ball that went past the post and over the racetrack and into a cornfield. The ball was hit so far that right fielder Bill Morrisette said he refused to retrieve it unless given cab fare. Rodger Pippen, 26 years old and filling in as a spare center fielder in the game, measured the distance. He said the ball had traveled 428 feet.
“The main topic of conversation is the work of Lefty Ruth and the prodigious hit he made in practice yesterday afternoon,” Pippen wrote in the
Baltimore American
. The rival
Baltimore Sun
had a two-column headline that read “Homer by Ruth Feature of Game.” Notable was the fact that his first headlines in professional baseball were for hitting, not pitching.
In his free time, he still roared. He was one of the players duped in a little roulette wheel operation a local resident set up in a room in the Lafayette. He tried horseback riding. Since he never had ridden, the man at the stables gave him a Shetland pony for starters. Ruth rode the pony into the local drugstore, where his teammates were relaxing at the soda fountain. He said he wanted to buy two ice cream cones, one for himself and
Fayetteville was a warm marvel. The temperature was 70 degrees. The men in town already were wearing straw hats in the middle of March. How can this be? Everything was a marvel. The Orioles checked into the Hotel Lafayette, where Ruth was fascinated by the elevator, riding up and down for days, leaving the door open, sticking his head out—watch it!—pulling back just in time to avoid serious injury. He was up in the mornings at five, familiar time for St. Mary’s, early for everywhere else, and down at the train station to watch the activity. He walked early to the Cape Fear Fairgrounds, where practice was held in a field next to the racetrack. He ate prodigious amounts of food at every sitting, buckwheat cakes piled into a syrup-drenched tower, gone in a moment, seconds on the way.
He was as raw as any kid who ever had stepped off any farm into this situation. He was very happy.
“He looked like a big, overgrown Indian,” Fred Parent, a former big league shortstop brought to the camp to work with the younger players, said. “He really had a dark complexion. He seemed to be really a happy-go-lucky kind of kid, made acquaintance easily. He had a really big voice. You’d think he weighed 500 pounds with that voice, and it grew bigger as he grew older.”
His nickname, the nice one, the one that would stick and become famous, arrived early. There are assorted versions of the story about when and how it arrived during the camp, but the one that is tidiest and, again, maybe even true has interim leader Steinman telling the veterans to take it easy with the new kid because “he’s one of Dunnie’s babes.” Rodger Pippen and Jesse Linthicum of the
Baltimore Sun
were in camp, heard Steinman use the word, and began to refer to “Babe Ruth” in their reports. It was not an uncommon nickname at the time. The babe officially was the Babe.
Some of the first newspaper stories that mentioned his name came after the first scrimmage at the fairgrounds. The team was divided in two, the Buzzards against the Sparrows, and he played a left-handed shortstop and pitched a few innings. He also hit the longest home run in Fayetteville history.
A white post had been planted at the edge of right field to mark a spot where Jim Thorpe, the decathlon champion in the 1912 Olympics, now with the New York Giants, once had hit a ball while playing in the Carolina League. In the seventh inning against the Sparrows, Ruth hit a ball that went past the post and over the racetrack and into a cornfield. The ball was hit so far that right fielder Bill Morrisette said he refused to retrieve it unless given cab fare. Rodger Pippen, 26 years old and filling in as a spare center fielder in the game, measured the distance. He said the ball had traveled 428 feet.
“The main topic of conversation is the work of Lefty Ruth and the prodigious hit he made in practice yesterday afternoon,” Pippen wrote in the
Baltimore American
. The rival
Baltimore Sun
had a two-column headline that read “Homer by Ruth Feature of Game.” Notable was the fact that his first headlines in professional baseball were for hitting, not pitching.
In his free time, he still roared. He was one of the players duped in a little roulette wheel operation a local resident set up in a room in the Lafayette. He tried horseback riding. Since he never had ridden, the man at the stables gave him a Shetland pony for starters. Ruth rode the pony into the local drugstore, where his teammates were relaxing at the soda fountain. He said he wanted to buy two ice cream cones, one for himself and
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