Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s Notes

Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by
♦ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the
paragraph in which they appear.

Details and other notes may be found at the end of this text.

BABE RUTH’S
Own Book of Baseball

By GEORGE HERMAN RUTH

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Printed in U. S. A.

BABE RUTH’S
OWN BOOK OF BASEBALL

Copyright, 1928
by
George Herman Ruth

By arrangement with
Christy Walsh

Made in the United States of America

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Baltimore River front—Street corner baseball—Days
at St. Mary’s—The first contract—A word of
advice from Brother Gilbert—The big leagues at last—The
climb upward—Aid from team-mates—A
$70,000 contract—Looking back 3

CHAPTER II

Baseball like a battle—Two big divisions, offense and
defense—What they are—Old-fashioned defensive
play—The shift to modern offensive baseball—Great
defensive teams of history—Some pitching marvels—Pitching
the keystone of defensive play—Offensive
stars of today 19

CHAPTER III

Pitching the keynote of defense—The pitcher’s job—Why
young pitchers fail—Control as a pitching factor—How
to obtain control—Alexander the old master—Shocker
gets by on “nothing”—Shawkey gives a few
words of advice to “rookies”—Practice counts most 32

CHAPTER IV

Studying the batter—Shocker a marvel—His system—Pennock’s
style of pitching—His pitching rule—Hoyt
weighs in with advice—Pitching to weakness
and strength—Playing the comers—Mixing them
up—Quinn a bluffer—How Hoyt uses his fast one 44

CHAPTER V

The pitching motion—How Zahniser betrayed his curve
ball—Ruth’s tongue gets him into trouble—Sherry
Smith catches runners off first base—♦Hinkey Haines’
experience—Slow ball pitching—Why it is valuable—The
type of hitters who are fooled by slow stuff—Experience
counts—Fielding aids pitcher 57

♦ “Hinkey Haines,” replaced with “Hinkey Haines’”

CHAPTER VI

What makes the curve balls curve—The fast ball—The
“hook”—Freak deliveries—The spit ball—The screw
ball—Its purpose—The knuckle ball—Rommel and
Pipgras use it best—Curve ball pitchers who have
made baseball history—Fast balls that are tricky—A
few yarns of pitching greatness 71

CHAPTER VII

The infield—The greatest play of the 1927 world series—Joe
Dugan pulled it—Lazzeri spikes Pirate guns—Great
second base combinations—The double play—The
snap throw to base—Great arms in baseball—Travis
Jackson gets Jake Daubert’s goat—Casey
Stengel tells one—What to look for in infield play 92

CHAPTER VIII

Playing the outfield—The kid idea—Stars who have
scintillated in the outfield—Great outfielders of all
time—Their methods of play—What the outfielder
needs—What he must look out for—Playing the hitter—Making
the throw—Some great outfield plays—Sam
Rice’s great catch—Harry Hooper, the old
master 106

CHAPTER IX

The catcher—His importance in the game—Directing the
play—Famous batteries of other days—How the
catcher can make or break a pitcher—Handling high
fouls the catcher’s toughest job—John Grabowski’s
great play that resulted in a change of rules—Holding
men on bases—The snap throw to first—Signs and
what they are—Ray Schalk the master 121

CHAPTER X

Team play—What it is—What it means—Signs and how
they operate—The pitch-out—Backing up the throw—The
cut-off play—How it was invented—The coaches,
and their duties—Miller Huggins puts one over—The
McGraw coaching system—A world series episode—The
old practice of signal stealing—How it operated—Out-of-date
now—Dangers of signal stealing 135

CHAPTER XI

Cobb is game’s greatest natural hitter—Is master of style—A
few Cobb yarns—Swing hitters and choke hitters—Importance
and weakness of each style—Gehrig’s
hitting style—What makes him great—Willie Keeler’s
motto—The value of waiting—Correcting batting
faults 149

CHAPTER XII

Hitting style—Naturalness at the plate—Simmons’ freak
batting stance—Joey Sewell has ideal stance—The
Ruthian swing—How it develops power—Selecting
the proper bat—Timing an important factor in hitting—How
to improve timing and swing 166

CHAPTER XIII

Hits are valuable only in so far as they score runs—Levsen
pitches two hit game and loses—Real test of hitting is
ability to smack ball when hits mean runs—The
danger of “tightening up”—Hitting slumps and how
to overcome them—Bunting, its value and use—Great
bunters and how they operated—The bunt
attack and how it is put over 180

CHAPTER XIV

Waiting ’em out!—Frank Chance puts one over—Jamieson
smacks the first one—Not always easy to wait—Trying
to outguess the pitcher—The intentional pass—Putting
on the hit and run play—Eddie Collins a
master at it—Huggins expresses an opinion 195

CHAPTER XV

The batting order—The kid idea—Getting the most out of
hitting strength—The lead-off man—Combs and
Waner are good—No reason why pitchers shouldn’t
be good hitters—A few examples—Heaviest hitters
bat third and fourth—That’s the scoring position 209

CHAPTER XVI

Team work counts—The hit and run, and when to use it—The
squeeze play—Urban Shocker puts it over great—A
bit of advice on base running—Great base runners
the game has seen—Schang pulls a good line on
Cobb—The slide an important feature of base running—Spiking
no longer done—The story of how
spiking began 224

CHAPTER XVII

Huggins a psychologist—How he put it over on the Pirates
in the world series—Baseball superstitions—McGraw
turns one to advantage and wins an important
series—College men in baseball—What they have
contributed to the game—Ball players who make
good outside of baseball—Zane Grey once a
professional—Billy Sunday and Governor Tener 240

CHAPTER XVIII

The men who play—What they are like off the field—Mere
human beings like other people—The road trips—Days
in the hotels—Fads and fancies—Koenig an
expert pianist—Hoyt a great reader—Huggins a financial
student—Shawkey a great hunter—Baseball,
with them, not a game but a business—The men who
play are business men 253

CHAPTER XIX

How the average fan looks on professional baseball—It is
a business but a short lived one—Why publicity
hurts sometimes—Keeping a physical edge—The
value of training—What it takes for success in baseball—A
few rules for the young player 270

CHAPTER XX

Some baseball laughs—The “battles” with the umpire—Tommy
Connolly puts over a fast one on Bob Veach—Joe
Dugan’s comeback at Jack Scott in the world
series—Bozeman Bulger’s colored umpire story—Charley
O’Leary weighs in with one—Sam Jones tops
it—A laugh on Rube Lutzke 284

Glossary of baseball terms 299

BABE RUTH’S OWN BOOK OF BASEBALL