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Retired Naval Off, Special Operations. Married 4 children and 4 grandchildren. UCLA grad History & Political Science. Love to fish and read historical fiction or fact.More By Cmdrporter
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Remembering When.
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My father, last week, told me a story that I hadn't remembered about Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth. During the latter parts of the 1915's and on and just before Ruth was traded to the Yankees. During the off season some of the boys use to go around the US on trains playing themselves from place to place.
Barnstorming was what it was called and I certainly wouldn't remember it because I wasn't even around then. Mel Ott, Nap Lajoie, Hornsby, Wagner, Cy Young and Christy Mathewson, to name a few, were involved for quite a few years until Major League Baseball started to grow. And then the stops were put to it by Landis and the owners but some still went anyway.
Included in that group were the Babe, Lefty, Rogers, Mel, Jimmie Foxx, Dickey and some of the Negro League players went as well. One year they came out to Southern California for an exhibition in Fullerton, the hometown of Walter Johnson, and played a game that Ruth hit a homer in that traveled according to my father, "Out of State or at least out of County".
He used to talk about it a lot when he first moved out here. In fact I have a picture taken of the poster advertizing the game hanging on my den wall. He and my uncle attended the game and it was at a huge field (even by today's standards) over by the high school. The picture shows a field with two bleachers along the baselines and an open outfield and no field, except the one that was the boundary for the entire field.
According to my father the left field fence was over 500 feet and that would make the centerfield fence about 650 or futher. Well, the first time up, Ruth hit a foul that traveled almost to the base of the left field boundary. Later on in the game, he came to bat with runners on base and hit a pitch so far in left center field that it traveled over the fence and if you believed my uncle and father the ball went about 700+ feet by the time it landed and kept on rolling.
I know where the field was and today it is a football stadium for the same high school. But if you know where home plate was and walk the distance that the ball traveled, you would end up in the middle of the football field and that is well over 650, most likely closer to 750+. It sounds crazy, but that has been talked about in my family for years and during the many visits that both Ruth and Johnson attended the farm later on, both said the same thing as my father and uncle.
"Yes the ball travelled a hell of a long way" and once Babe told me that he could only remember one other pitch that he had hit as hard and that one was during the '24 world series. It is too bad that today's players don't - or aren't allowed to - go barnstorming around the US again to show people that can't afford to go to a major league game what today's players look like up in person. I think about my childhood and all the players in the 40's just after the war that came down to the farm and what I got to see.
Watching major league talent on TV isn't anywhere near seeing it in person. In today's economy, most families don't have a couple of hundred extra dollars to go see a major league game in person. In the NBA you have all kinds of minor games with major talent playing all over the country. In fact, L. James, one of our better NBA players, got dunked on in a pickup game or such and it was video taped even.
Just remembering what it was like to be a baseball fan and watching my favorite players play.
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