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First Jackie, Now Babe

© Harold Friend

Jackie Robinson is the only player whose number has been retired by his own team and by the opposition. Only purists would argue that a team should not retire an opponent’s number and I am a purist, but I am not going to criticize the decision. Instead, I am going to relate a proposal put forth by a baseball expert who is a personal trainer at a fitness center not too far from Yankee Stadium, who believes that a second player should have his number retired by all major league baseball teams. That player is Babe Ruth.

Nineteen twenty marked the turning point in the course of major league baseball. The public must believe that certain things, such as elections, courts, and competitive events are honest, whether or not it is true. The illusion, not the reality, is what counts. When the general public discovered that the 1919 World Series results might not have been what they believed them to be, baseball was faced with a crisis of epic proportions. Baseball historians believe that Babe Ruth almost single handedly rescued baseball from the Black Sox scandal of 1919. They are right.

The steps needed to ensure that the Cincinnati Reds would win the 1919 World Series were taken. When Cincinnati did win, it seemed no more than a mild upset, but in the winter of 1920-21, the scandal broke. Eight players, including Joe Jackson were indicted. According to some reports, Jackson had told White Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the fix, but the latter did nothing with the information.

The scandal couldn't have come at a worse time. There were the beginnings of a depression following World War I, the public was disillusioned with politics, and racial tensions existed in much of the country. America needed an opiate and baseball had been filling that role. The Offical Encyclopedia of Baseball says, ”Baseball suffered a near-fatal blow upon the revelation that the infamous Chicago 'Black Sox' had thrown the 1919 World Series.”

The baseball owners, who had dubbed baseball the “national pastime,” were fearful that confidence in the integrity of the game would be shattered beyond repair. In an attempt to fix what seemed almost impossible to fix, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was installed as baseball’s first commissioner. He had unprecedented powers over the game, was stern, despotic, and uncompromising, but more was needed.

The 1921 season started under a cloud, but Babe Ruth was now a New York Yankee, set free from the then five times World Champion Boston Red Sox by owner Harry Frazee, who needed money to finance the show, No, No Nanette. Little did anyone, in her wildest dreams, suspect that the “No, No” in No, No Nanette really referred to the Red Sox ever again becoming World Champions in the twentieth (and probably the twenty first) century.