The Best Post-Season Games Ever Pitched

Don Larsen doesn’t top the list.
Don Larsen doesn’t top the list?!??
Don Larsen doesn’t top the list.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 11-26-2019

El Paso Herald, November 26, 1919:

Grief reigns in the Ruth family. Bobby Meusel, a mere coast league player, has busted one of Ruth’s “stock” of bats—the “stock” consisting of two specially made clubs.

“Babe” Ruth, the superbatsman, was playing in an exhibition game and had his bats ready in case of emergency. It was Meusel’s turn at bat, and the sturdy Coast leaguer, wishing to have the privilege of batting with one of the clubs that has sent many a horsehide over the big league fences, picked out one of Ruth’s “private stock.”

The ball came straight down the groove and Meusel let go. A sound of splitting wood filled the air as the ball rolled down the field, and Ruth’s bat busted right at the handle. The question now has arisen as to who is the best batsman—Ruth or Meusel. Many believe that Bobby takes the honors, inasmuch as he busted the champion’s bat; while others maintain that the Vernon player failed to hold the bat correctly.

I’ll go with Option C*, that Meusel absolutely knew what he was doing with a bat in his hands, but Ruth was incomprehensibly great.

* - I will not go with Option J, at least not right now.

Babe Ruth’s bat used for 500th homer hits auction block

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The bat used by Babe Ruth to slug his 500th career home run in 1929 is going up for auction, nearly 75 years after he gave it to a friend whose family has kept it ever since.

Ruth became the first player to reach the coveted plateau on Aug. 11, 1929, hitting a solo shot for the New York Yankees off Willis Hudlin at League Park in Cleveland.

In the mid-1940s, Ruth gave the bat to his friend Jim Rice, who was mayor of Suffern, New York. Ruth and Rice enjoyed golfing, bowling and dining together, and Ruth was a regular visitor to the Rice household, where he came to know Jim’s wife, Ethyl, and their children. Rice once beat Ruth in five straight games of bowling.

Terry Rice, an attorney in Suffern and Jim’s only son, is selling the bat. Born two years after Ruth died in 1948, Rice more closely associates Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra with the Yankees of his youth, but he remembers Ruth’s bat sat in the corner behind the television in the family’s den.

Sadly, there’s no evidence that Ruth gave away the bat because he feared Jim Rice…..

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 9-9-2019

Pittsburgh Gazette Times, September 9, 1919:

Boston defeated New York in both sections of a double header here [yesterday], the scores being 3 to 1 and 3 to 0.

In the eighth inning of the first game, Ruth hit a home run in the right field for his twenty-sixth home run of the year, breaking the established major league record. Freeman of the Washington National League club, had held the record for years when he hit 25 home runs in 1899.

Clearly a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. It’s tough to imagine anyone hitting more than 26 or 27 home runs in a season.