Spokane baseball nerds wave in honor of Babe Ruth’s visit

They smoked, sniffed, drank and sometimes connected on Thursday evenings in honor of the day the Babe brazenly entered the Lilac City and homered during an exhibition baseball game.

That stormy visit by George Herman “Babe” Ruth and his fellow outfielder Bob Muesel of the New York Yankees took place exactly 100 years ago on Thursday.

The carnage of releasing old baseballs into their watery graves in the Spokane River began 17 years ago as the brainchild of baseball junkie Dave Jackson, a founder of Hoopfest and a teacher at Lewis and Clark High School.

Jackson said he learned about Ruth’s visit in 1924 when he read about it in a book edited by the late Tony Bamonte.

Jackson said as a child he remembers the old Natatorium Park from the 1960s before it was demolished. It is the location of the Sans Souci West mobile home park.

Originally called Twickenham Park, officials later renamed it Natatorium due to the popularity of its indoor pool.

According to History Link, the city’s first professional baseball team was founded on the park’s grounds and the swimming pool opened there in 1893.

As for Ruth’s 1924 visit, an excerpt from The Spokesman-Review indicated that Ruth hit three doubles, a single and a home run during his at-bats at Nat Park.

“Every time Ruth stood still for a few minutes, he was surrounded by pools of children pouring out of bleachers and fences,” the article said.

Muesel hit a home run in the sixth inning. Ruth hit a long fly ball in the eighth inning, which Muesel caught near the fence for an out.

But Ruth got another at bat.

“After about six balls had been whistled, waving with his easy grace, so surprising for a man of his elephantine proportions, he hit a high one over the board in center field,” the article said. “The crowd stood up and cheered. All the children grinned. There was the light of heaven on their faces. They had seen Babe Ruth hit a home run.”

A reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted that Ruth had eaten wild duck and buffalo during his train visit to Spokane.

“I’m going to get a herd of buffalo when I get back to my farm in New England,” the newspaper quoted Ruth as saying after the game in Spokane. “Next year I should hit a hundred home runs on a buffalo diet.”

Jackson, the LC teacher, said the game had some strange rules, such as allowing Ruth and Muesel to get chances every inning regardless of where they were in the lineup.

“We are celebrating this day, the 100th anniversary of the Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, winning the race in Spokane on October 17, 1924,” Jackson told a gathering of 12 people near the river Thursday evening.

Jackson said he became a baseball junkie because of his father, Charlie Jackson, who died earlier this year at age 93. Charlie Jackson played in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

“The first photo my parents took of me put me in my dad’s baseball glove,” Jackson said. “He gave me the glove bug.”

As a result, Jackson said he has hundreds of baseball gloves, some dating back to Ruth’s playing days.

“I had a Babe Ruth bat,” Jackson said.

Jackson said he moved into a house on Summit Drive about a year and a half before he heard about Ruth’s visit.

“I called my crazy friends together and said, ‘Let’s go celebrate the Babe.’ We gathered a bunch of baseball players and started this 17 years ago,” Jackson said.

While the goal of Thursday’s event was to hit a baseball across the river, which has only been accomplished a handful of times, including twice by Jackson’s son Adam. But the river had no historical connection to Ruth.

While Ruth hit a home run and reportedly committed several fouls at Nat Park, he did not hit them into or over the Spokane River, Jackson said.

“But Babe said that was the longest home run he’d ever hit in his life. So the crowd stormed the field and the game was over in the eighth inning. He would have been there,” Jackson said, pointing above him. “People who really knew baseball said he was the greatest of all time.”

Jackson said it’s Ruth’s lore he’s trying to celebrate.

“He was swinging a giant bat, the drinking made him a little overweight,” Jackson said of Ruth. “To do what he did with all the RBIs and all the games played and all the wins… he was probably the most famous figure, face or celebrity on planet Earth in 1924.”

On Thursday, several people took hacks and achieved different forms of success.

Jackson’s son, Adam, hit two across the river. One cleared the lower brush, landed beyond and splashed down in a pond. The other fell into the rocks on the other side.

Jackson and Terry Schmidt, also co-founder of Hoopfest, had participants read a quote from Ruth, sign the wooden bat Schmidt had made for the event, take a shot of rye whiskey and then swing to the other bank.

Matt Filippini, another teacher at LC, crushed the first ball and made it to the other side of the river.

Stan Smith, 75, had several scents and openly wondered if he would connect. “Can I thrust?” Smith asked to laughter. Jackson replied: “That might be the best line ever.”

Smith then connected with a ball and sent it three-quarters across the river. “It felt good,” said Smit. “I used to play ball. I hadn’t swung a bat in fifty years.”

As for Ruth’s visit, Jackson said Ruth and other famous players would dash into cities by train and play exhibitions to raise money. They would pocket some of the money and donate the rest.

During his visit to Spokane, Ruth, an orphan herself, had heard about the Hutton Settlement in Spokane Valley while in Vancouver, British Columbia. The settlement was founded in 1919 by Levi Hutton and the self-sustaining settlement would never turn away a child without a home.

During Ruth’s trip, he visited the Hutton Settlement campus. Not only did he play baseball on the dirt lot at the front of the property, he also ate lunch with the girls who lived there in their dorms.

The baby

According to historical records, Ruth and Muesel visited Spokane in 1924, just weeks after ending the season on September 27 with a 4-3 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. The Yankees finished second after winning the 1923 World Series.

For the 1924 season, Ruth won the batting title with a .378 average. He also hit the most home runs with 46 and 124 RBIs. He had 200 hits and 141 walks and scored 143 runs in 153 games.

Meusel also had a great year for the Yankees. He hit .325 and had 12 home runs, which was second most for the Yankees behind Ruth.

Meusel also tied Ruth for most RBIs with 124 and added 26 stolen bases to lead the team, according to historical Yankees archives. That year, Ruth stole nine bases, but was caught stealing thirteen times.

Muesel later joined Ruth to become part of what became known as “Murderer’s Row”, which also included the famous Lou Gehrig. It was during that 1927 season that Ruth hit his monumental 60th home run, a record that stood for 34 years until fellow American Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961.

The Yankees racked up 110 wins in 1927, won the American League pennant by 19 games and defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. It remains one of the most dominant baseball team records of all time.

Jackson said most people forget that Ruth got his start in baseball as a pitcher and won three championships with the Boston Red Sox. During his pitching career, Ruth won 94 games and finished with a career 2.28 ERA.

The Red Sox sold his rights to the Yankees in 1919 in a transaction that ushered in 86 years of futility for Boston and became known as the “Curse of the Bambino.”

Ruth played for 22 years. His last year with the Yankees was in 1934 and he retired the following year after a brief stint with the Boston Braves.

In 1946 he was diagnosed with a form of cancer in the back of the throat called nasopharyngeal cancer, and he died two years later at the age of 53.

In its prime, Spokane was only able to experience a small part of the Ruth dynasty thanks to a 1924 train stop.

“It was almost like he was a cartoon character,” Jackson said of Ruth. “But it was true and legit. He’s still a larger-than-life guy.”