WHEN GIANTS WALKED THE LAND IN CALIFORNIA : Barnstorming With Gehrig and the Babe

They were not merely the best team in the American League that year. And they were much more than simply the winners of the World Series. The New York Yankees of 1927, sportswriters, fans and opposing players concurred, were probably the best team that ever played baseball.

They were, it was proclaimed, a dream team, a team for all seasons and for all ages. And since that summer 60 years ago, America has not seen another team quite as sensational as the 1927 New York Yankees.

The Yankee dominance in 1927 came as a surprise to most sportswriters and fans. Although the New York club had won the American League pennant in 1926, it had lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series in seven games.

But in 1927, the new, improved Yankees simply slugged the American League to smithereens. They started winning game after game that spring and kept on winning all through the summer. By July 5, they were 12 games ahead of second-place Washington, and on that day in what the press called a “crucial” doubleheader, the Yankees crushed the Senators, 12-1 and 21-1.

The Yankees finished the regular season with 110 wins and only 44 losses, finishing 19 1/2 games ahead of second-place Philadelphia.

Then they faced Pittsburgh in the World Series. In their first practice session at Forbes Field, the Yankee sluggers hit one ball after another over the distant fences. The Pirates sat in the grandstand, watching in awed silence. One perceptive observer concluded that the Pirates were beaten before they even took the field. He was probably right. The Yankees whipped the Pirates in four.

The team batting average for the 1927 Yankees was .307. Four players drove in more than 100 runs each, but Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were real stars of the club.

Ruth was 32 at the time and near the height of his powers. Gehrig, 24, had also quickly come into his own. Ruth’s average that year was .356 and Gehrig’s soared to .373, up from .316 in 1926. Ruth hit 60 home runs and drove in 164 runs. Gehrig hit 47 homers, drove in 175 runs and was named the league’s most valuable player. Ruth and Gehrig accounted for nearly 25% of the home runs hit in the entire league that season and had more than any other team’s total.

After the Series romp, Ruth and Gehrig were in great public demand and Christy Walsh, Ruth’s business manager, organized a barnstorming tour so that fans across the country could come out and see them. Major league baseball was still pretty much an east-of-the-Mississippi affair in America in those days and most Americans knew Ruth and Gehrig only through stories and pictures in the newspapers, or silent newsreels. Traveling any great distance to see a major league team play was a luxury beyond the reach of millions of enthusiastic baseball fans.

In late 1926, however, C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle, the legendary promoter, had taken tennis star Suzanne Lenglen on a cross-country exhibit tour that netted the French woman nearly a quarter of a million dollars in four months. Walsh realized the financial windfall that might be had simply by giving the public a look at Ruth and Gehrig doing what they did best--hitting home runs. So he put together a national tour for the home run heroes.

The Yankee stars were scheduled to play on opposing teams--the Bustin’ Babes and the Larrupin’ Lous--to be staffed by local players along the tour route.

On October 11, Walsh’s traveling baseball show left Pennsylvania Station in midtown Manhattan for a journey through America’s heartland and then out to the Pacific Coast.

The tour gradually made its way across the country, playing day after day in sold-out ballparks of middle-American towns and cities before enthusiastic star-struck crowds. Nearly a quarter of a million fans in 18 states came out to see the Yankee stars shine.

On Friday, Oct. 21, the tour arrived in San Francisco and the next day the exhibition game drew 13,000 fans, the largest crowd yet on the tour. Gehrig hit one home run but Ruth was shut out, much to the disappointment of the crowd.

In Oakland the next day, Ruth again went homerless but Gehrig hit one. On Oct. 24, back in San Francisco’s Recreation Park, Ruth redeemed himself by hitting two homers. The crowd--just like the crowds from Brooklyn to the Bible Belt--went crazy and adoring fans mobbed the Sultan of Swat.

The tour went on to Marysville, Stockton and Sacramento, then arrived in San Jose amid much fanfare and public excitement on Wednesday, Oct. 26.

Anticipation and excitement had been building among San Jose’s 60,000 residents. All 12 of the city’s public schools closed for the game, as did several local industries. The 3,000 fans who appeared at Sodality Park that afternoon were in an expansive and demonstrative mood. The Ruth-Gehrig show elicited the same sort of enthusiasm that was generally seen only on the 4th of July or when the circus came to town.

One of the more enthusiastic young fans, Ernie Fairchild Jr., couldn’t wait for the gates of Sodality Park to open. He squeezed through a small opening in the left-field wall and ran to Ruth and Gehrig for autographs. A dozen more kids followed and sought sanctuary near Ruth and Gehrig after eluding the frustrated cops, trying unsuccessfully to control the leakage through the fence.

Local player Luke Williams had bought 13 dozen balls for the game. He was amazed to see Ruth dig into them and give away 12 dozen autographed souvenirs even before the festivities began.

“I told Babe, ‘You’re kind of generous with my baseballs, aren’t you?’ ” Williams recalled. “But he looked up from the crowd of kids surrounding him and laughed. You couldn’t get mad at him.”

In pregame ceremonies, the crowd cheered enthusiastically as 89-year old Dan O’Leary, an extraordinarily fast heel-and-toe walker and the tour’s opening act, showed how fast he could circle the bases in a walk.

Then Ruth and Gehrig gave a hitting demonstration. A strong wind, however, foiled them and prevented either from hitting a ball over the enticingly close right-field wall. But after each attempt, fans rushed under the baseline ropes and onto the field to race the fielders for the baseballs. And after it became apparent that the wind would prevent either player from carrying the wall that afternoon, the exhibition ended and the game began.

For the San Jose game, the Bustin’ Babes had an edge in talent. Lefty O’Doul, a once and future major leaguer playing with the San Francisco Seals, played right field for Ruth’s team. Each time O’Doul ran onto the field, dozens of screaming girls rushed out to touch him or to hang onto him. A reporter predicted that when he got back to the major leagues, O’Doul would be known, no doubt, as the Sheik.

Although O’Doul got only one hit in Sodality Park that day, a double, he did succeed in distinguishing himself during the game by making a spectacular leaping catch up against the right-field wall and robbing Gehrig of a home run.

Local players Thomas J. Randazzo and Mario (Speeder) Duino both played well. Randazzo, a Santa Clara University star, got three hits and scored three times. Duino, who was scheduled to report to the Seals’ training camp in 1928, smacked two triples and a single.

No matter how well the local boys did, though, the star of the day was Ruth. The fans studied every move he made. When another player was at bat and Ruth stepped into the on-deck circle, all eyes were on the Yankee slugger.

“I remember the tremendous appeal of Ruth,” Randazzo said. “When he walked out onto the field, you didn’t see anyone else. He was a giant. He was Mr. Baseball.”

In the first four innings, Ruth hit two singles and stole a base as the Bustin’ Babes busted out to a 4-1 lead.

Then in the fifth, Ruth’s team really exploded and brought the crowd to its feet. O’Doul led off by popping out to Gehrig at first, but Penney Oliver started a seven-run outburst with a single to deep center. Nearly every hit, foul ball and wild pitch produced a wild foot race between a player and the fans who wanted a souvenir ball. Fortunately, most of the races were won by the players.

Ruth flied out to deep left field to end the inning but as he turned back toward the bench from first base, the excitement proved to be just too much for those crowded behind the baseline ropes. They surged over and under the barrier and onto the field, grabbing and touching and standing next to Ruth, Gehrig and O’Doul, shouting for autographs on baseballs, programs, gloves and slips of paper.

Play was suspended for nearly 30 minutes before half a dozen policemen could steer the fans back to their seats, only after threats to cancel the remainder of the game.

In the long seventh inning, Ruth popped out to Gehrig at first and the mood of the crowd began to change. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to see Ruth hit a home run. A couple of local “soft stuff” pitchers, Bill Nash and Pop Dowle, had held Ruth to two harmless singles in five trips to the plate.

The fans were not impressed. They had come out to see Ruth and Gehrig hit the ball over the fence and the versatility and expertise of the local players was not something anyone cared about. Nobody wanted to say years later that he had seen Ruth hit a double.

Duino, Randazzo and O’Doul had all outhit Ruth and although Ruth appeared to be unruffled by it, the local players were not. “Even the ballplayers were pulling for Ruth to hit one by that time,” Randazzo said.

In the ninth inning, two significant developments occurred. First, the wind suddenly stopped blowing. And second, a lanky local player, Earl (Duke) Perry took the mound for the Larrupin’ Lous.

Recalled Perry, normally a first baseman: “I knew the fans were growling for Ruth to sock one. They had paid $1.50 admission--a lot of money in those days.”

So he volunteered to deliver the pitch required for Ruth to do his thing.

Perry faced four batters in the ninth. The lead-off hitter singled to deep left. Then Duino smacked a triple to center, Randazzo walked and Ruth came to the plate. As the Bambino stepped to the plate and took a practice cut, the crowd rose and stood silently. This was the moment they would all remember.

“I motioned to Ruth to indicate where he wanted the pitch,” Perry recalled. “He shouted out to me, ‘Anywhere around the plate.’

“I threw that first pitch for a called strike on the outside corner. I remember remarking to the umpire that that was a dangerous spot because Ruth was liable to belt it back and knock my legs off.” (Legend has it that Ruth hit one home run that went between a pitcher’s legs before it went over the center-field fence.)

As Perry wound up for his second pitch to Ruth, he paused, glanced over at Duino on third and Randazzo on first, creating the final histrionic effect, then put the ball right where Ruth wanted it--a fastball low and inside.

Ruth tagged it perfectly just over the plate, pulled it hard and leaned a little. There was the familiar sweet crack of hickory hitting horsehide and the ball was launched toward the right-field wall, going, going, going. The right fielder backed up to the fence, watched the ball and then stopped, realizing that his was a futile pursuit. He raised his glove and waved goodby to the ball.

The ball cleared the wall, reporters insisted, by 150 feet, passed out over Guadalupe Creek and disappeared from view beyond the CPC cannery buildings.

And that was that.

That was all the crowd had been waiting for. There was an explosion of shouts, applause and laughter. Normally reserved citizens of San Jose jumped up and down and dancing around in circles. He’d done it and they’d seen it!

Fans spilled over the bleacher wall and onto the field, and then ran--kids leading the way--toward the Babe. Ruth rounded first pursued by a battalion of worshipers. He stayed ahead of them until he rounded second. And there, just after he tagged the base, he was surrounded by adoring fans. They engulfed him an lifted him to their shoulders and carried him the rest of the way home.

Babe Ruth had delivered. He had given his best and had hit a home run for San Jose. Three-thousand people had seen it. A hundred times that number would claim, in succeeding years, that they had seen it, too. But at the moment, hundreds of breathless and feverish fans shouted their lungs out and grasped the hands that had gripped the bat that blasted the ball that cleared the fence in Sodality Park San Jose on a warm and windy Wednesday afternoon in 1927.

A legend had truly come to life in Sodality Park. And everything they said about Babe Ruth, this crowd knew, was absolutely true.

The game ended right there with a

15-3 victory for the Bustin’ Babes, because everyone realized it was useless to try to sweep this crowd from the infield, and because Ruth had just hit the 156th ball--the last of Williams’ 13 dozen--over the fence.

From San Jose the tour went on to Fresno, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. It arrived in Los Angeles Oct. 29. Thirty-thousand people turned out at Wrigley Field to see Ruth and Gehrig. California’s Lieutenant Governor Buron Fitts threw out the first ball. Babe hit no home runs in that game but Gehrig hit two. The tour ended the next day in Long Beach.

Ruth batted .616 on the tour and hit 20 home runs. Gehrig batted .618 with 13 homers.

And so the Babe moved on. Times changed. The Roaring ‘20s gave way to a Great Depression that in turn gave way to another world war.

Thomas Randazzo gave up professional baseball, went to Santa Clara University Law School and became a prominent San Jose attorney and city councilman. Mario Duino and Luke Williams continued to play minor league ball for a few years, before retiring, each to open his own dry-cleaning business in San Jose.

Duke Perry, who threw the pitch that made 3,000 wishes come true in Sodality Park, retired from baseball in the mid-1930s and joined the Santa Clara Police Department. Before retiring he had worked his way up to assistant chief.

Lefty O’Doul went back to the major leagues in 1928. And although he was never known as the Sheik, he did play big league ball for 11 years and retired with a lifetime batting average of .349.

Lou Gehrig quit baseball in April, 1939, after having played in 2,130 consecutive games. Two years later, at 37, he died.

Babe Ruth retired in 1935, after setting 54 major league records. He died Aug. 16, 1948, in Memorial Hospital in Manhattan. Eighty-thousand people filed past his casket in the lobby of Yankee Stadium two days later.

The legend of Babe Ruth, however, lives on. One former Yankee concluded that it was simply impossible to describe the phenomenon that was the Babe. “My God, the way people would come from all over to see him,” Mark Koenig recalled. “You had to be there to believe it.”

In San Jose, 3,000 fans were there to see it and believe it. Few of them would forget that day in the sunshine when Babe Ruth did what they knew he could do.

Sportswriter John Kieran wrote of the tour that year:

With vim and verve he walloped the curve , From Texas to Duluth . Which is no small task , And I rise to ask: Was there ever a guy like Ruth? The most popular answer at the time, of course, was a resounding and spirited, “No!”

Those from the thinning ranks of eyewitnesses to that afternoon 60 years ago will say with earnest insistence that there were real heroes in the land in 1927, who enriched and inspired routine daily lives wherever they went. Many of their records were broken, but Ruth and Gehrig were never replaced. And if you don’t believe that, just ask someone who watched them play in California six decades ago.