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PROLOGUE:

Due to travel restrictions placed on ue baseball by the War Department, the World Series of 1918 was played in Septeo Cubs hosted the first three games, with the final four to be held in Boston On Septeaether to eot drunk and started stealing hats

They'd had to pour hione to a house a few blocks east of Wabash where a ame of cards, a steady supply of liquor, and a woman or two, and if Stuffy McInnis hadn't knohere to look for him, he would have missed the trip home

As it was, he puked off the rear of the caboose as the train chugged out of Central Station at a little after eight in the evening and wound its way past the stockyards The air oolen with smoke and the stench of butchered cattle, and Ruth was damned if he could find a star in the black sky He took a pull frole of rye and spit it over the iron rail and watched the spangle of Chicago's skyline rise before him as he slid away from it As he often did when he left a place and his body was leaden with booze, he felt fat and orphaned

He drank so one of the ue In a year when houe had totaled ninety-six, Ruth had accounted for eleven Damn near 12 percent Even if someone took into account the three-week slump he'd suffered in June, pitchers had started to treat hi hitters, too, because Ruth had pitched the Sox to thirteen wins that season He'd also started fifty-nine games in left and thirteen at first

Couldn't hit lefties, though That was the knock on him Even when every roster had been stripped to its shells by the players who'd enlisted in the war, Ruth had a weakness that opposing un to exploit

Fuck 'em

He said it to the wind and took another hit froift from Harry Frazee, the team owner Ruth had left the team in July Went to play for the Chester Shipyards tea ar You threw a strikeout, you got applause You hit a hoot mass eruption Proble, too When Frazee threatened them with a lawsuit, Chester Shipyards shipped Ruth back

Frazee had met the train and escorted Ruth to the backseat of his Rauch & Lang Electric Opera Coupe It was maroon with black trim and Ruth was always amazed by how you could see your refl ection in the steel no matter the weather or tiy like this, and Frazee idly fondled the gray upholstery as his driver pulled onto Atlantic Avenue "More than you, Mr Ruth," he said and handed Ruth the flask

The inscription etched into the pewter read:

Ruth, G H

Chester, Penna

7/1/18-7/7/

He fingered it now and took another swig, and the greasy odor of cows' blood mixed with the metallic smell of factory towns and warm train tracks I am Babe Ruth, he wanted to shout off the train And when I'm not drunk and alone at the back of a caboose, I a in the wheel, yes, and you bet I know it, but a dias Someday

Ruth raised his flask and toasted Harry Frazee and all the Harry Frazees of the world with a string of lewd epithets and a bright sed them doard

"I'ht, to the skyline, to the smell of butchered meat To the dark midwestern fields that lay ahead To every ashen mill town between here and Governor's Square To the smoky starless sky

He stumbled into the stateroom he shared with Jones, Scott, and McInnis, and when he woke at six in the , still fully clothed, he was in Ohio He ate breakfast in the dining car and drank two pots of coffee and watched the smoke pour from the stacks in the foundries and steel mills that squatted in the black hills His head ached and he added a couple of drops from his flask to his coffee cup and his head didn't ache anymore He played canasta for a while with Everett Scott, and then the trainstop in Sus in a field just beyond the station, and that's when he first heard of a strike

It was Harry Hooper, the Sox teaht fielder, and second base to the Cubs' left fielder Leslie Mann and catcher Bill Killefer McInnis said the four of them had been thick as thieves the whole trip

" 'Bout what?" Ruth said, not really sure he cared