When Babe Ruth came to Iowa
A 1922 barnstorming tour brought popular Ruth to Perry, but he wasn't yet a legend
The Babe Ruth that came to Iowa in the fall of 1922 was not the giant of sport and celebrity that still lingers in popular imagination.
Ruth was the certainly the most famous player in baseball, but he was not the legend against which all the game’s greatest players are compared some 90 years after his last swing.
“The idea that he was the greatest of all time was probably not in people’s minds,” said Timothy Grover, author of “Barnstorming Babe: A Slugger’s Bumpy Trek Across Small-Town America.”
“In his lifetime, Babe Ruth changed what it meant to be a celebrity, but that hadn’t happed yet.”
For people west of St. Louis, which was the most westerly city in the Major Leagues of that era, baseball existed only as box scores and newspaper stories.
Radios and radio stations were still relatively rare, about 300 stations nationwide compared with about 15,000 today.
Ruth was more of a curiosity than an obsession.
The 1922 season started poorly for Ruth.
MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspended Ruth for the first six weeks of the season for barnstorming in the previous off season, which was banned for World Series participants.
Barnstorming was a way for players to make money off their baseball skills in the off season.
A group of Major Leaguers traveled to to cities without big league teams to play local talent and let Americans outside the nation’s great metropolises see the stars who took up so much ink in their local sports pages.
When Ruth’s season finally began, he started in a slump. He finished the year hitting .315 with 35 home runs and 96 RBI.
Those are MVP numbers in modern baseball, but Ruth had set the Major League home run record with 59 in 1921, beating the record of 54 he’d set the previous season. He hit .378 and led the majors with 168 RBI and 177 runs scored in 1921.
Ruth was 27 during the 1922 season and whispers began that maybe best years were behind him.
To make matters worse, the Yankees lost the 1922 World Series to their rivals, the New York Giants.
The series marked the Yankees' second consecutive championship loss to the Giants and Ruth had hit a paltry .118 with only two hits and no homers or RBI.
Landis lifted the restrictions on barnstorming and Ruth was eager to get away from the harsh criticism in the New York papers.
Ruth and his Yankees teammate, Bob Meusel, embarked on three-week tour across the Midwest and West, playing larger venues such as Kansas City, Missouri, and Denver.
But most of the tour's 18 games were played in small communities, starting with Perry on Oct. 13, 1922.
Perry was a Dallas County city of about 5,700 people. The Perry American Legion financed the event and believed they would sell 4,000 tickets. Legion leaders hooped to raise money for World War I veterans.
“Kids got notes from their parents — or forged them — to get out of school to see the game,” Grover said. “Farmers came in from the fields. Businesses closed. It was a big deal.”
But fall winds brought an overcast sky and blustery winds. Many travelers stayed away. A crowd of 836 saw Ruth and Meusel perform.
Meusel played on the visiting semi-pro team from Pella. He hit a grand slam.
Ruth played for the hometown Perry squad. He smashed a triple his first time up, knocking in two runs.
Ruth struck out his next time up on what was likely a spitball from the Pella pitcher.
Ruth adjusted his swing and clapped another triple his third time up as Perry beat Pella 13-4.
Grover recounts the words of legendary Des Moines Register sports editor Sec Taylor describing Ruth: He “moved with incredible speed for a man that looked like a giant about the waist and a normal human being in the legs.”
The game brought in $1,055, which went to the players, who had been promised the first $2,000 of ticket sales.
The tour moved on to Omaha the next night. Grover believes the fall in the hinterlands changed Ruth.
“I think he grew up a lot after 1922,” Grover said. “Ruth had been a big kid his whole life — which was both good and bad. I think he took life and baseball a little more seriously.”
How much the barnstorming tour affected Ruth is lost to time, but his next season was arguably his best.
Ruth hit .393 with 205 hits and led the majors with 41 home runs, 130 RBI, and 151 runs. He missed the Triple Crown because Harry Heilmann, the first baseman and right fielder for the Detroit Tigers hit an astounding .403 in 1923.
Ruth joined forces with 20-year-old rookie Lou Gehrig to form the most fearsome one-two punch in baseball history.
The 1923 Yankees won the pennant and set their sights on the hated Giants, beating the Giants 4-2 in the World Series, bringing the Yankees their first championship.
Practically a ghost, in the 1922 World Series, Ruth hit .368 with three home runs against the Giants in ’23.
In 1927, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, joined second baseman Toni Lazzeri, and centerfielder Earle Combs to become the feared Murders’ Row. The team is regarded as one of the best in history.
Ruth hit 60 home runs that season at age 32. Radio expanded and brought live broadcasts into living rooms nationwide.
“Ruth became the Babe Ruth we know and imagine today,” Grover said. “By then, every kid wanted to be Babe Ruth.”
But one day in Perry, more than 100 years ago, George Herman Ruth was a curiosity on a cold and windy day at the local ballpark.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.
Another Iowa connection to the Bambino: His Yankee teammate George Pipgras, a pitcher who went 10-3 for the 1927 Yanks and 24-13 in 1928, was a native of Ida Grove. He pitched 11 years for the Yankees and Red Sox and then became an American League umpire.
Ruth's final public appearance was in Spencer, IA, June 22, 1948. John Hart, owner of the local Ford dealership was friends with the Babe and had played in exhibition games with him. Ford Motor Corp. was sponsoring Babe to tour the country promoting American Legion Youth Baseball. He was in poor health then and passed away 2 months later at his home in New York,