A Game In Scranton

The photo below was taken on October 17, 1919 and may be the last time Babe Ruth appeared in a Red Sox uniform.

The photo was published in the Scranton Times-Tribune and the occasion was a charity game organized by local lawyer Leon Levy to raise funds for the American Jewish Relief Committee.  The work of the Committee was mostly directed to helping Jews in Eastern Europe left destitute in the wake of WW1 and now threatened by revolutionary turmoil and pogroms.

While other major leaguers participated in the game, the Babe, who that season set a new home run record with 29, was the big draw, and organizers were thrilled when he wired the day before that he would be coming for the event.  Though Ruth hit two doubles, the crowd was deprived of seeing a home run, though he hit a monstrous shot foul down the right field line that left the park, flew over a street, and came to rest in a field on the other side of the road.

The festivities did not end with the game.  According to the Times-Tribune:

The fun did not end with the All-Star charity game, the players would stay in town a few more days to continue to help raise funds. On Saturday, the players help with a Tag Day. Were they went around downtown Scranton tagging everyone to contribute to the fund. Then in the evening, parties were held throughout the city at places such as the Hotel Casey, the Hotel Jermyn and the Poli Theater. At 9:30, a dance was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association building on Wyoming Ave. Ruth along with Mike McNally and other professional players were on hand to dance and pose for photos with committee members and the young ladies who were selling cigars, cigarettes and novelties at the dance. In addition, the players signed baseballs, used in the charity game, were later auction off.

The goal of all the fundraising efforts for the local campaign for American Jewish Relief Committee was $200,000. In today’s money that figure would be $2,749,734.

The crude and poorly educated Ruth did not exhibit the casual bigotry so prevalent in America at the time, though I am sure his language was not tame by modern standards.  Later in life, in 1942, the Babe, of German heritage and raised in a Catholic reformatory for orphans and wayward boys, was the lead signatory on a full page appeal published in the New York Times and 50 other major newspapers denouncing Hitler's campaign of extermination against the Jews (you can read about it here).

And, as is well-documented, Ruth frequently played in exhibitions with Negro League players and repeatedly expressed a willingness to have them play in the majors.  He also, despite the entreaties of his manager who worried it would damage his image, regularly visited Negro orphanages in his travels across America.