Category Archives: Baseball

Highway Farty

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St. Louis Sportsman’s Park Banner

Highway Farty refers to the local St. Louis pronunciation of old US 40 (now I-64), where the “o” vowel is shifted to an “ar” sound. It is a characteristic feature of a native St. Louis accent, which also turns neighboring I-44 into farty-far. In this instance though Highway Farty alludes to a YouTube channel on local St. Louis history. I watched this series’ first five episodes that explains why Babe Ruth liked coming to St. Louis to play baseball more than anywhere else in the country. Here is a heads-up, it wasn’t the baseball that attracted him.

The first episode acts as an introduction to this series and centers on Sportsman’s Park and its role in the 1926 World Series. At the time St. Louis had two MLB teams, the Cardinals and the Browns. Located on the northside, both teams shared Sportsmen’s, with one team on the road, while the other team at home. The American League Browns regularly brought the Yankees to town. In 1926 Ruth hit three homeruns in the fourth game of that world series. Most famously one for 11-year-old Johnny Sylvester who was sick in the hospital at the time.

Baseball may have first brought Babe Ruth to town, but it was his favorite whorehouse in the whole country that made him actually want to come here. Episodes 2-5 detail the search for this once famous, but now elusive house of ill repute. Host Don M. Kaiser travels around town, following his clues. False starts and dead ends include the House of the Good Sheperd, Magdalene Laundry and Busch’s Grove. Sifting evidence, he finally hits paydirt.

In St. Louis, on August 29, 1925, Ruth was fined $5,000 ($100,000 in today’s dollars) and suspended from the Yankees for violations of team rules. Given a train ticket, he was ordered back to New York. Instead, he headed back downtown and straight to his favorite bordello, whose site is currently occupied by a Salvation Army parking lot, near the midtown IKEA. On September 3, 1925, the Post Dispatch reported a police raid at this location where the moral squad arrested two young women and a maid. Ruth apologized to management and patch things up with his team and was in St. Louis again next year.

Cochiti Redskins

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Cochiti Redskins, Mateo Romero, 2000

Did you know that since the start of the 20th century many Native American communities have had baseball teams? Many famous early 20th-century Native American baseball players started the sport at assimilationist boarding schools. This painting of men in baseball caps and jerseys emblazoned with the words “red” and “skins” speaks to that history. The slur was the name of the DC NFL football team until 2020, when it was renamed the Washington Commanders. Mateo Romero was actively involved with changing the name beginning in 1992. Here, he reclaims the term with Cochiti Pueblo members dressed and posed like a baseball team. Though Romero’s team is imaginary, Cochiti Pueblo has had a minor league baseball team for decades, the Cochiti Braves. 

Take Me Out of the Ballgame

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Baseball Has Marked the Passing of Time

The other night, we socialized with the neighbors at the Cozy Inn. George, always a stalwart at these events was there too. He regaled the night’s pretty good crowd, with the news of his cabin. A few months ago, he had had a fire and inquiring minds wanted to know. He has reached a settlement with his insurance that include plans for the new cabin and a bill of materials. He still has to select a contractor, but teardown of the old cabin should begin in a week or two. The new place will be slightly larger than the old one, in order to accommodate the county’s new ADA regulations. It will be a framed building and not a log cabin.

I do not know how we got on the subject, but more interesting, at least for me, was George’s recounting of his father’s geriatric softball career. His dad had joined this league with a minimum age of 75 and played until he turned 103. Even more amazing, he played catcher, which is generally considered to be a younger man’s position. George is a tall man, so I figure that his old man was one too. His dad passed a few years ago at 107. The most amazing aspect of this story is that in all of the years of defending the plate, George’s father had three opponents die in his arms there. Me being me, I had to ask, were the runner’s safe or were they out? This question evoked a round of chuckles, and it was eventually agreed that they had all made it safely home, sweet home.

Fort Sumter

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Fort Sumter

South Carolina’s license plate says, “First to Fight,” still rebelling after all these years. North Carolina’s says, “First in Flight,” in honor of the Wright brother’s feat. Fight or flight are two instinctual defense mechanisms, but I am not going to go there, because Anne has just won the license plate game. Rhode Island was the last holdout. She restarted the game and then saw another Little Rhody plate. This means that Rhode Island will not be the last holdout. Come on Hawaii!

There was sad news this morning that my childhood hero Willie Mays had died. I came of age in the world of baseball rooting for the San Francisco Giants. My brother and I would follow their games daily on our newly acquired transistor radios, cheering on Mays and the Giants and jeering their arch rivals the LA Dodgers. For a while we lived on base, near old Candlestick Park. Once our mother took us to a game there. Our dad dropped us all off and then went to work. We were waiting in line outside of left field when a towering home run from Mays’ teammate Willie McCovey came crashing down in the parking lot near us. The game was sold out and that home run might have been all the baseball that we saw that day, except that it was a double header. After the first game, some businessmen were leaving early, and Mom scored us box seat tickets for the second game. This was my brother’s and mine first MLB game.

Today’s itinerary was nautically themed, we first visited the aquarium and then Fort Sumter. The aquarium had lots of silent fish and screaming children. Sumter is on an island, so we took a ferry there, another three-hour tour. There were no working bathrooms at the fort. This message was repeatedly drilled into us. I surmise that the real reason during the Civil War that this fort fell was not that it could not holdout any longer, but the defenders couldn’t hold it any longer. 😉 

Rookie Babe Ruth

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Luke Urban was my great-uncle. He was my mother’s father’s brother. As his biography relates, he was quite the sports hero. He seemingly played every sport available, football, basketball, hockey and baseball. After making All American at Boston, he went on to play professional sports, playing both football and baseball. He played Major League Baseball for the Boston Braves, during two seasons in the late 1920s. In later years he returned to his (and eventually my) hometown of Fall River, MA and coached the high school boys’ teams successfully until retirement. There is a sports arena in Fall River, named for him still in operation to this day.

Family legend has it that Uncle Lukey had once roomed with Babe Ruth. The story goes that Lukey, the low man on the pole, got stuck rooming with the Babe, because none of the other players wanted to room with him. Supposedly the Babe would go out partying at night and then come back to the room late, waking up his sleeping roommate. The other anecdote from this liaison, has Lukey recounting that the Babe was always borrowing money. He always closed the story with, “But he would always pay you back.” I had always assumed that they met while playing for the Boston Braves. I imagined Lukey, as the young kid coming up for his chance at The Show. I imagined the Babe, past his prime, just traded from the Yankees, back to Boston. The problem with this story is that while both Lukey and the Babe did both played for the Braves, they did so in different decades. Another problem with this view is that Lukey was only three years younger than the Babe. I did find this reference to Lukey in the book, Fall River Dreams, that somewhat substantiates the family’s story.

It adds the news that they roomed together while playing for a minor league team and not in the major’s as I had assumed. According to Wiki, while the Babe was on his way up, he was once sent back down from the Boston Red Sox’s to the minors to play for the Providence Grays. The year would have been 1914. Lukey would have been in high school and only sixteen. The Babe would have been nineteen. The Babe got his nickname because he was so young looking when he started playing. Providence is not that far from Fall River and in high school Lukey was already playing ball. Maybe they did room for one summer. Lukey was a catcher and at the time the Babe was a pitcher, both young, they would have made a natural pairing. In 1948, the year of the Babe’s death, Lukey was managing the minor league team, the Fall River Indians. The Indians regularly played the Grays as part of the New England League. I believe the family’s stories. Lukey’s career was substantial enough that it did not require whole cloth embellishments. It would be nice to have more conclusive historical evidence, but just think of the promise of this story, a sixteen-year-old boy rooming one summer with the King of Swat. Who wouldn’t want to be that boy?