One hundred years ago this week, some big names in major league baseball played two (completely legal) exhibitions in Little Rock. Chief among the stars was the New York Yankees' Bambino — Babe Ruth.
Of course this was far from Ruth's first visit, and some locals knew all about his drunken carousing. Still, he was a massive sports hero and a crowd magnet.
That Ruth was allowed to play in an exhibition game was newsworthy in and of itself. Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was punishing Ruth for defying a newish rule banning independent barnstorming by World Series players.
After the series in 1921, Ruth got up a traveling team of such guys, who needed work because the owners didn't pay them between seasons. As these Ruthians set out for a string of exhibition games in Podunk, Wheresville and East Water Tower, Landis ordered him to stop. He didn't. And so Landis decreed that the big rebel and his co-conspirator Bob Meusel would not be allowed to play for 39 days of the season to begin in May 1922.
These Little Rock games in April were arranged by the team owners, and so he was allowed on the field.
In one game, the Yankees (American League) played their National League rivals from Brooklyn, N.Y. In another game the next day, the St. Louis Cardinals played the minor league Little Rock Travelers.
To understand this old news, it helps to know that Brooklyn in 1922 went by nicknames besides "the Dodgers." Sportswriters like the Arkansas Gazette's Heinie Loesch invented monikers such as "the Brooklyns," "the Brooklyn Nationals" or "the Robins" — after manager Wilbert Robinson.
Loesch dubbed the Yankees "the Yanks" or "the Americans."
Also, to the Arkansas Democrat's W.N. Stone, the Cardinals were "the Red Socks," and the Travelers were sometimes "the Kidlets," after manager Norman Arthur "Kid" Elberfeld.
All three majors agreed to share ticket proceeds with their host, the Travelers. Stone reported that a third scheduled exhibition, between the Travs and a scrub team from the Pittsburgh Pirates (the Pirate-Yannigans) had been canceled because "the greedy big leaguers wanted to 'hog' all the receipts."
ROBINS GIVE SHOW
Here's Loesch on April 4, 1922:
"George Herman Ruth, sultan of swat or by whatever title preferred to designate that he is the hardest hitter of baseball, yesterday demonstrated before some 6,000 admirers at Kavanaugh field that he is very, very human. The Babe did practically everything but get a hit.
"The Babe packed them into the park at $1 a head, but it was the Brooklyn club of the National League that furnished the entertainment. The Brooklyns made it as entertaining as possible without the cooperation of the New York Americans by administering a highly artistic and thorough defeat to the American League champions, 12 to 0."
"As for George Herman," Loesch continued, "his performance at least had variety, and it was very evident that he wanted to please. Ruth likes those home-run licks about as well as do the pop-eyed folks who make it a big day at the box office when the Babe is inside. However, it wasn't his day to crack one and he didn't."
He struck out, walked and "hit one a mile high to centerfield for an easy out." In his final at-bat, he "enrolled a humble grounder to the ancient Ivan Olson, who has crossed over the bag and now is a second baseman."
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But as a Yankee left-fielder, "the Babe hit all the columns wherein fielding records are kept. He caught a fly ball. He snagged a ground ball and threw out a runner at third for an assist, and then in the ninth he thundered in for a fly ball and muffed it."
FIELDS A BUNNY
In other action, the Yankees benched their starting pitcher Carl Mays in the third inning. "Carl added a bush league touch to the exhibition when he acknowledged the signal from the bench to get out by throwing the ball over the grandstand," Loesch reported.
In the bottom of the ninth, "a frightened rabbit of the cottontail species recklessly strolled out of perfect security somewhere on the left field hill and started to run the bases in reverse order." Brooklyn's Jimmy Johnston snagged the bunny on the first bound for a perfect pickup, and stuffed it into his shirt.
And some bleacherite tossed a seat cushion at spectators near the right-field foul line, starting a flurry of cushion hurling. "A policeman was among the casualties and when the battle spread to the grandstand, several women were hit with cushions," Loesch reported. "The police were helpless. But when Kid Elberfeld tackled the rioters single-handed, the affair was speedily ended.
"These cushion demonstrations add nothing to the gaiety of the occasion and should be eliminated in the future if possible."
FOR THE LADS
The evening of the Yankees' loss, Ruth gave a short talk in the Hotel Marion ballroom for the Little Rock Boys' Club — "2,000 Little Rock boys, whose ages ranged from 4 to 60 years."
Ill-governed little boys swarmed onto the platform, felt of his arm muscles and asked him how to hit a home run. Then Miss Claire Connor led the boys in song while Mrs. E.W. Hartman played the piano. Ruth asked the boys to repeat "Peggy O'Neal," and they sang with gusto.
When he stepped to the front, a shrill voice at his right yelled, "Climb on the chair, Babe!" And Babe climbed on the chair. He said:
"Leave cigarettes alone until you're 20. I never smoked a cigarette until I was 20 years old, and if you leave them alone, you'll be real men."
The show ended with Babe standing by the exit and handing out baseball-shaped buttons printed with the words "Babe Ruth."
"Gosh! It was wonderful!" he said, as he mopped perspiration from his forehead. "I've been handing out these buttons until my arms feel like I could never hit another 'homer,' but, say, wasn't it great!"
FINISHING TOUCH
As for the Cards-Travs matchup the next day, rain stopped it after the fifth inning, and so the Cardinals won, 2-0. Their big name, Rogers Hornsby, struck out by lunging for a ball and missing it by a foot.
But the best part of this story happened days later, when Patrolman Ed Scott noticed two lovely young women shooting dice in the waiting room of the Missouri Pacific railroad station. After he recovered from the horror and shock, he hailed a cab and escorted them directly to police headquarters.
Inez and Marie Covello, traveling film agents from the District of Columbia, said they were only shooting for pennies and only because they had nothing to do with the town locked up for the night and their train to Shreveport, La., yet to arrive.
Marie fainted away but was revived with cold compresses.
The police let them leave after the women promised that their next game of bones would never take place in public — and after they explained that the dice had been given to them by Babe Ruth, sultan of swat.
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