Babe Ruth: alcohol and women

This is the second Babe Ruth article; the first was published in November 2013

Lore of Babe Ruth drinking and/or otherwise carousing in Maynard is just that. A few neighboring town waterholes - such as the Dudley Chateau in Wayland - claim to have been speakeasies frequented by Ruth back in the day. The timing would have been in the early 1920s - after national Prohibition was in effect. What is missing from this story is confirmation of sites within Maynard that were serving booze back then. The two oldest bars extant - The Pleasant Cafe and Stretch's Tavern (now Morey's) - both postdate the end of Prohibition.

Babe Ruth could have been buying in Maynard and drinking at his Sudbury estate just two miles away. When he bought the farmhouse in 1922 (see below) it included a simple cabin on Willis Pond, about half a mile from the house. Babe and his friends could head out there for an evening of drinking, cardplaying and whatnot without disturbing his wife and daughter in the farmhouse. His name for the cabin was "Ihatetoquitit."
     

A quote often attributed to Babe Ruth, but in fact the work of current-day comic writer Jack Handey: "Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think, 'It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'" 

On the other hand, this one appears to be true Ruth: "I learned early to drink beer, wine and whiskey. And I think I was about five when I first chewed tobacco."

Babe may or may not have been drinking heavily during his Red Sox years; a time when the sale of alcohol was still legal in Massachusetts, albeit banned in many individual towns. In Ralph Sheridan's reminisces about visiting Ruth's cabin on Willis Pond he said he never saw Ruth drink, nor saw any alcohol in the house. Babe Ruth spent mid-1914 through 1919 with the Red Sox, initially as a pitcher, but by the end pitching less and putting in more time as an outfielder. He was sold to the Yankees before the start of the 1920 season. He was 25 years old.

Contract Morals Clause

After two years of Ruth's successes and shenanigans in New York, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees, attempted to curtail Babe's drinking and partying. Thus an addendum to the contract signed in late 1922:  "It is understood and agreed by and between the parties hereto that the regulation set forth shall be construed to mean among other things, that the player shall at all times during the term of this contract [$52,000/year] and throughout the years 1922, 1923 and 1924, and the years 1925 and 1926 if this contract is renewed for such years, refrain and abstain entirely from the use of intoxicating liquors and that he shall not during the training and playing season in each year stay up later than 1 o'clock a.m. on any day without the permission and consent of the Club's manager..."

Babe Ruth and admirers (Internet photo)

This appears to have been the first morals clause for a professional athlete. Ruppert may have hoped that the Sultan of Swat would also curtail his compulsive womanizing, but did not try to get that into the contract. Supposedly, at the time of that meeting the Babe told Ruppert: "I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun."

While a Yankee, Ruth and his wife made one more stab at reconciling. He bought the farmhouse at 558 Dutton Road, in Sudbury, after the 1922 season, and Babe took up the public image of a gentleman farmer living the good, clean life in the country with his wife and their adopted daughter. He called the estate "Home Plate Farm"

Babe was in residence the winter of 1922-23. After that, his wife continued to reside in Sudbury or elsewhere in the Boston area, but Babe was mostly in New York. They formalized their separation (not a divorce) in 1925 and she sold the house in 1926.  

As a postscript, the Dutton Road house and barn, situated on two acres, recently sold for a bit under $1.3 million, while in 2012 a Yankees baseball jersey worn by The Bambino in 1920 sold for $4.4 million.

BUY THE BOOK!

A reminder that this makes a good holiday gift, either retail priced in stores or discounted on line

MAYNARD: History and Life Outdoors
128 pages. 53 illustrations 

Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 978.1.60949.303.5

Price: $19.99

The book is available in Maynard at The Paper Store; also on line from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Maynard, Massachusetts resident David A. Mark brings his years of experience as a writer and scientist to create this fact-populated collection of short essays gathered into twelve theme-linked chapters. The contents were originally published 2009-2011 as Mark’s column in Maynard’s newspaper, the Beacon-Villager.


Mark continues to write for the newspaper; his more recent columns are posted at www.maynardlifeoutdoors.com.

Maynard: History and Life Outdoors mixes local history, observations on nature, and recreational activities as a means of exploring what Maynard, Massachusetts offers to anyone willing to get away from too much time looking at screens and not enough time spent seeing, hearing, touching and smelling the life going on outside. History starts with eighteenth century stone walls, then carries forward to twenty-first century river clean-ups and farmers’ markets. Nature spans skunks to skunk cabbage, deer to deer ticks, and birds to bird food. Recreational sports essays range from describing the slow-motion, nightmarish feel of snow shoeing to how to avoid overhydration – the potentially deadly opposite of dehydration.

Author at Marble Farm event

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maynard – Why “Outdoors”

Eighteenth Century

Birds and Bugs

Bicycling

Nineteenth Century

Assabet River 

Mammals

Twentieth Century

Plants

Striving

Marble/Whitney/Parmenter Farm

Twenty-first Century

Babe Ruth: Sudbury, Massachusetts

Inside the Smoke Shop (courtesy Maynard Historical Society)
The space is currently two stores. Click on photos to enlarge.

See Dec 2013 for second article.

Sudbury in the early 20th century was a quiet rural community, about 20 miles west of Boston. Babe Ruth and his wife spent at least two winters there. 

From a book "Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox" by Allan Wood: "Babe and Helen Ruth spent the winter of 1917-18 at their farmhouse in Sudbury, MA. They often took a horse and buggy into the nearby town of Maynard, where Helen would shop for groceries or clothes, while Babe would buy cigars and play pool at the Maynard Smoke Shop, which was owned by Frank and Joe Sheridan. The owners' younger brother, 19-year old Ralph Sheridan, had followed the Red Sox since 1908, and he recognized Ruth the first time he walked into the store."

It makes sense that the Ruths shopped in Maynard. Sudbury was a quiet farming town of 1,100 people, whereas the population of Maynard was close to 7,000. Maynard had grocery stores, band concerts, dance halls, pool halls, bowling alleys, bars, a Woolworth's and daily trains to and from Boston. Sudbury had vegetable farms (including greenhouse farms serving the Boston market) and chickens.

Outside the Smoke Shop (courtesy Maynard Historical Society)

To the end of his days, Sheridan was known to greet people with "Shake the hand of a man who shook the hand of Babe Ruth." For those familiar with the sweet science, it's a take on "Shake the hand of a man who shook the hand of John L. Sullivan."

The Maynard Historical Society has a tape of an interview with Sheridan, made in 1994 when he was 96 years old. The interview can be listened to online from the MHS website as Podcasts. The last one mentions Ruth at 22 and 30 minutes. The Smoke Shop was the east end of the 100 Main Street building, where Classic Hair Design and Legends Comix and Games are now.

Why was the young Red Sox pitcher living in Sudbury? Firstly, this was not the Dutton Road farmhouse that Babe bought in 1922, when he was already a star for the Yankees. Rather, the story goes that a couple of his teammates with the Red Sox had invited him to visit Sudbury, where they would rent cabins near Willis Pond to fish and hunt. For the winter of 1917-1918, Ruth (22 years old at the time) rented a modest waterfront cabin (since burned down) near the end of Butler Road. Maynard was the closest place to go shopping and also to drink, play pool and otherwise carouse.

This story is not complete without a connection to the legend of Babe Ruth's piano. Again, Ralph Sheridan's reminisces, as recounted by Allan Wood: "Several times that winter, Ruth invited young men and kids from the area out to his house. Ralph Sheridan worked in a nearby woolen mill and on the weekends, he and some friends, all teenagers, would walk from Maynard, about one mile, across Willis Pond to Ruth's farm. Babe and Helen were often out playing in the snow when Sheridan and his friends came by."

In a letter, Sheridan recalled that he and his friends and Ruth would play outside. When they got cold, Helen invited everyone into the cottage and served them hot cocoa and cookies. "Mrs. Ruth would play the old battered piano and we would all sing along, including the Babe. He loved kids and always liked to have them around. And, always when we would leave, he would say, 'Come over again and bring the gang.' We were thrilled to be with him."

So how did that upright piano supposedly end up in Willis Pond? As one version of the story goes, a daytime gathering at the house got overcrowded - the cottage being only 20x50 feet - so Ruth and others pushed the piano down the hill and out onto the ice. There, they continued the party complete with singing and dancing while Helen played the piano. When it was time to move the piano back it was too heavy to push up the hill. So, the Babe simply left the instrument on the ice, where it eventually sank to the bottom.

Kevin Kennedy, a resident of Sudbury, has been searching for the piano for many years. Teams of expert divers have been in the pond more than once. In 2010, a group of divers pulled out pieces of wood, possibly white oak, that piano expert David Sanderson of Sanderson Piano in Littleton believed could be the veneer of an old upright piano. The divers also believed they had located the piano's harp beneath the murky waters. But as of November 2013 there is no additional news.

Where Babe lived off-season

1914-15     Baltimore, with his father, after Babe and Helen married in October 1914
1915-16     Baltimore
1916-17     ??
1917-18     Sudbury, in cabin on Butler Road, waterfront on Willis Pond
1918-19     Sudbury?? no mention in various biographies
1919-20     Sudbury?? no mention in various biographies
1920-21     The Ansonia Hotel, Manhattan, New York
1921-22     The Ansonia Hotel, Manhattan, New York
1922-23     Sudbury, 558 Dutton Road = "Home Plate Farm"
1923+        The Ruths owned the Sudbury house until 1926, but Babe may have been spending
                   most of his time in NY, only occasionally visiting his wife and daughter
                   in Massachusetts.

Babe (center) and his father (right) at his Dad's saloon in Baltimore, taken
 December 1915. His father died August 1918 (Internet photo download)

What Babe was paid by the Red Sox
 [http://www.baseball-almanac.com/tsn/babe_ruth_salary.shtml]

The amounts below are base salary and equivalents in 2013 dollars. Players who had a good season were sometimes paid bonuses. Play-off teams got play-off income. And players or all-star teams sometimes did post-season exhibition games for money. All told, a star could perhaps double base salary. One reason salaries were modest is that there was no television or radio advertising income for the owners. Today's top-paid baseball players make on the order of $20,000,000 plus $1,000,000 from endorsements.   

YEAR     DOLLARS      IN 2013 DOLLARS

1914         1,300                  30,000

1915         3,500                  80,000

1916         3,500                  75,000

1917         5,000                  91,000

1918         7,000                108,000

1919       10,000                135,000

1920       20,000 (Yankees)

Thoreau walked thru Maynard

Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, nine years before the founding of Maynard. This is not to say that he did not visit the area. Transcripts of his journals and other writings available online at www.walden.org/library can be downloaded and searched for mention of the Assabet River, the gunpowder mill, the paper mill and the new dam built for the woolen mill.

September 4, 1851: Thoreau set out with William Ellery Channing (whom he referred to as “W.E.C.” or “C.” in his journals) to walk from Concord to Boon Lake and back. The round-trip distance was a tad over 20 miles, some of it on roads or along the railroad, and some through woods and fields. Outward bound, he notes that chemical odors from the gunpowder mill made them cough. Their walk continued westward past the paper mill, meaning that they were walking through Assabet Village – now Maynard – possibly on either Main Street or Summer Street. At the time of his visit the various mills of Assabet Village were the business center of a population of about 500 people. 

Ben Smith dam during a drought

On the way back from Boon Lake, Thoreau and Channing walked alongside the railroad, on the south side of the Assabet River (now known as Track Road). Construction of this spur off the Boston to Fitchburg line had begun in 1849, and by 1850 extended through Stow to Hudson. 

Thoreau complained in his journal that there was no good place to bathe for three miles because Knight’s new dam [the Ben Smith dam, constructed 1846-47] had so raised the river. His description: “The fluviatile [meaning found near or in rivers] trees standing dead for fish hawk perches and the water stagnant for weeds to grow in.” Thoreau also wrote that on the way back to Concord they rested on the top of a hill looking down on a new brick ice house – most likely N.J. Wyeth’s brick ice house, built 1849, by the mill pond. 

Thoreau’s journals mention the gunpowder mill several other times. The location was along what is now Powder Mill Road (Route 62), in Acton. On January 7, 1853, there was an explosion at the mill. Thoreau wrote: “About ten minutes before 10 a.m. I heard a very loud sound and felt a violent jar which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle... I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the Powder mills four miles distant… I jumped into a man’s wagon and rode toward the mills. In a few minutes more I saw behind me far in the east a faint salmon colored cloud carrying the news of the explosion to the sea.”

“Arrived probably before half past 10:00 a.m. There were perhaps 30 or 40 wagons there. The kernel mill had blown up first and killed three men who were in it said to be turning a roller with a chisel… and fragments mostly but a foot or two in length were strewn over the hills and meadows as if sown for 30 rods.” [165 yards].

“Three other buildings were destroyed or damaged. Every timber and piece of wood which was blown up was as black as if it had been dyed except where it had broken on falling. Other breakages were completely concealed by the color— I mistook what had been iron hoops in the woods—for leather straps.”

“Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees where undoubtedly their bodies had been & left them. The bodies were naked & black. Some limbs and bowels here and there, and a head at a distance from its trunk. The feet were bare, the hair singed to a crisp. I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there.”

Six years later he revisited the scene of the explosion. He noted that as one drew near the powder-mills, the hill behind was bestrewn with the fragments of mills which have been blown up in past years, adding in an ironic tone that the fragments of the killed mill workers have been removed.

Explosions continued to plague the gunpowder mills. As described in Jan Voogd’s 2007 book Maynard: A House in the Village, an 1878 explosion was so intense that all to be identified of one worker was his wedding ring. As late as the 1940s, and at that time under ownership of American Cyanamid, buildings kept blowing up. 

Geocaching in Maynard, MA

Logbook and cache contents at It Ain't Everest (Maynard)

It's pronounced "geo-cashing." And the word cache, for the singular of what is being sought by people engaged in geocaching is pronounced "cash." Late fall is a perfect season to take up this pastime because hard frosts have reduced the risks of deer ticks and poison ivy, but the caches will not yet be hidden by snow.

Geocaching is a modern outdoor hobby with historic roots. First the modern: in May of 2000 the worldwide Global Positioning System (GPS) was accuracy-upgraded to within 10-20 meters. Within days, people were experimenting with the idea of hiding a marker or container, then posting GPS coordinates on the internet and seeing if searchers could find it. In September 2000 the website www.geocaching.com was created to provide a system of hiding caches and logging finds. Massive publicity followed.

As of October 2013 there are over two million caches and six million Geocache members worldwide. According to one on-line listing, Maynard is host to 10 (11?) caches and Stow to 30. All of Massachusetts has a tally a tad under 12,500. Some members have taken it upon themselves to find one cache in every city and town - the Massachusetts 351 Challenge. Maynard's oldest, "Grave Calculations" - near Glenwood cemetery - was created in the first year of geocaching.  

The rules are simple. Any member (basic membership is free) can use a computer to find existing caches. Next step is to home in on the site with a GPS device - either a dedicated GPS device such as Garmin, or a smart phone with a geocaching app. Premium membership provides on-line tools for cache selection and access to a set of members-only caches.  

August 2013 geocachers at the Summer Hill site logged
 that they were unable to complete their visit because
as they approached the tree near the cache they were
viciously attached by hornets, ending up with ten stings
amongst them. A November (post-frosts) visit found
this remnant of the hornets' nest.

There are no valuable treasures in this treasure hunt. The containers at these cache sites range in size from a marshmallow to a gallon milk bottle. Caches will have a logbook to write an "I found it" entry. Most will contain trinkets of nominal value - small toys, foreign coins, etc. The idea is to take something out and add something you brought. Once home, geocachers log in to enter that they found (or failed to find) the cache. Geocachers can also add notes and photos to be viewed by those considering visiting the site. 

Members can also create caches. Geocache.com provides extensive guidelines, as do various books on the hobby, such as The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching. Once a reviewer has approved a proposed cache it is posted on the website.

All caches are rated on a one- to five-star scale for difficulty and terrain. The former applies to both the difficulty of puzzling out the GPS coordinates, if encoded in some way rather than just given, or in actually finding the cache once on location. Small caches can be disguised as a rock, or perhaps a hollowed out golf ball in the woods near a golf course. Terrain ranges from child- and handicap-accessible to extreme. If instructions suggest rappelling equipment, spelunking expertise or the existence of a waterproof cache, a cache chaser might assume cliffs, caves and SCUBA gear will be involved!

Pastimes generate their own lexicon and geocaching is no exception. TFTC is Thanks For The Cache. YAC stand for Yet Another Cemetery (common cache sites). CITO refers to the practice of going in to place or find a cache and taking trash out on the way out. Non-cachers are referred to as muggles (borrowed from the Harry Potter books' term for non-wizards) and a cache that has been taken or vandalized has been muggled. The cache creator can either restore the cache or delist it if expectations are high that it will be damaged again. 

As with any hobby, participation can be recreational and/or competitive. Once a Geocache Reviewer officially publishes the existence of a new cache there is a mad rush to be FTF (First To Find). Some people specialize in extreme geocaching, meaning they focus on caches in the most difficult terrain. Others prefer night searches. The latter require flashlights to detect nail head sized reflectors attached to trees. Or even a UV flashlight.    

Historically, there were systems of hiding and seeking caches that predate GPS-aided geocaching. "Letterboxing" refers to boxes hidden in outdoor public places. Finders follow clues which involve deciphering puzzles, map reading and orienteering. This all began in Dartmoor, England, circa 1854.

THE MAYNARD LIST

YEAR     LAST        D/T*         NAME

2001       8/13        3.0/1.0       Grave Calculations

2006       12/13      3.0/3.0       Mom's River Cache

2008       11/13      1.0/3.0       Summer Hill

2010       10/13      2.0/2.0       2009 Red Sox Roster - Wakefield

2010       10/13      1.5/2.5       Oogity Boogity Buggity

2012       11/13      2.0/2.5       It Ain't Everest

2012       11/13      2.0/1.5       Tour of Maynard

2012       7/13        2.0/2.0       Togo's Trail

2012       10/13      1.5/2.5       Tripletree (starts Acton but may end in Maynard)
2013       10/13      1.5/1.5       HeatWave & Jayden

????        ????        1.5/2.0       Beetles Bracelet Exchange (Premium members only)

* Difficulty and Terrain on a 1.0 to 5.0 scale; 5.0 = hardest

MASSACHUSETTS WEBSITES OF INTEREST
http://www.massgeocachers.org/
http://www.geocaching-capecod.com/index.htm