BABE Ruth and I were teammates on the Yankees—and lovers, too. It was no big deal back then. After Sunday games were over, lots of players and writers would come by our little flat in the Morrisania section of the Bronx for one of Babe’s famous bean dinners. I also remember the evening when Babe, wearing his familiar pink housecoat, turned out a nice catfish stew for Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Everyone in baseball knew how it was with me and Babe. After the company had gone home and we’d done the dishes, he would lie in my arms and I’d whisper, “You are my bambino.”
Babe was a fine singer as well as a great cook. He was a natural mezzo-soprano. As we know, Harry Frazee, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, sold Babe to the Yankees in 1919 because he needed cash to back a Broadway musical. What hasn’t been told is that he hoped to land Babe for the ingénue role in No, No, Nanette. It was all-day games back then, and once the Sultan of Swat had become a fixture at Yankee Stadium he’d have plenty of time to wrap up his work in the Bronx, hop on the subway, and sing and dance on Broadway that evening. An understudy would fill in for him at the Saturday matinées and when the Yanks were away on road trips. That was Frazee’s plan, at least. As it transpired, however, there was a two-year production delay and by the time Nanette went into rehearsal Babe had grown too fat for the role. Louise Groody got the part instead. He was heartbroken.
The reason was steroids. These were readily available in the early nineteen-twenties, in the form of breakfast food. All you had to do was read the label. Babe went into a bit of a slump in the spring of ’22 and, looking for a lift, downed a hundred and twenty-seven bowls of Wheatnutz in one sitting. Typical Ruthean excess. By nightfall, his weight was up by fourteen pounds and he’d turned contralto. The svelte Babe had gone forever, except at the ankles.
The Babe and I were also involved with the Yankees’ famous decision to wear pin-striped uniforms. He wasn’t a cross-dresser, but one night I was playing pinochle with him in a little Worth frock that had been given to me by Lady Cunard—tight in the bodice but flaring to that cute kneetop hem—and Babe said, “Say, wouldn’t that organza stripe look great on our plain white unies!” Excited, we called Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the Yankees’ owner, who came right up for a look. He agreed—he was that kind of executive—and once again baseball history was made.
Not everyone was as broadminded about our relationship. Lou Gehrig seemed a mite stuffy about Babe’s ways, but he cheered up when he understood that what Ruth wanted from him was something quite special. Babe had been raised in an orphanage, and one day at Comiskey Park he popped the question—asked Lou if he’d legally adopt him. “Kid,” he said (he called everybody “kid”), “you play like an old man, so why not be mine?” Lou was tickled—he was that kind of baseball immortal—but in the end his mother, Mom Gehrig, said no.
I’d only played on the Yanks with Babe for a couple of seasons when it became clear that I should give my full attention to our arrangement, undistracted by cheering and umps and train trips. So I quit. Babe never turned up at our place until late—he had a marriage and fatherhood to take care of, downtown—but I needed a whole day to get ready. Shopping, making dinner, and laying out his evening togs made the hours fly by. He’d come in smoking a cigar and full of that day’s doings—“I bopped one good offa Walberg!” I can hear him exclaiming—and before you knew it the doorbell would ring and another of our soirées would be under way. Jimmy Walker, Neysa McMein, George Bernard Shaw, Jack Dempsey, Harpo Marx, J. Edgar Hoover, Theda Bara, Jimmie Foxx, Bernarr Macfadden, Edna St. Vincent Millay—ask rather who didn’t make it uptown to our tasteful nest. Night ran into dawn, and lucky late-stayers might get to hear the Babe (insouciant on the lap of John McCormack, the great Irish tenor) reprise his tender “Caro nome,” from Rigoletto, or—standing tall with a bat held high—give us one more spirited “Apparvi alla luce” as La Fille du Régiment.
Us old baseball bores are all the same, and it’s time for me to get off the field here. If you’re wondering which Yankee was the Babe’s sweetie for so long, I’ll give you a little tip. Look carefully at the mid-twenties team photos and maybe you’ll notice that on Babe’s cap the famous “NY” logo is interlocked in a slightly different way than on the other guys’. The “Y” is sort of on top, instead of underneath. Then look for another smiling old Yankee with the same variation. That’s me! That was our symbol, and Babe and I got our couturier to appliqué it onto our uniforms and, later, our hankies and hand towels. Everyone knew but nobody cared. Those were the days.
2002