(Editor, Dodger Dugout)

Just over 70 years ago, in 1938, the Brooklyn Dodgers were starting to stir from the morass of internal friction which had robbed them of any continuity and which kept them mired in the second division of the National League.

Larry MacPhail

At the urging of the National League, the board of directors hired flamboyant Larry MacPhail as General Manager. He would quickly put the team back into contention and eventually on to their first pennant in 21 years.

But his first season, 1938, was a slow one. The club didn’t have much of a team, even less of a minor league system and he had little money to make player deals. So he cast around for any sort of lucrative scheme to put some dollars in the cash box with which to purchase live bodies for the playing field.

Despite the lack of ready money, he had borrowed, and spent, $50,000 to purchase first baseman Dolph Camilli from Philadelphia and then went into deeper debt with the Brooklyn bank for money to refurbish decaying Ebbets Field.

MacPhail changed the starting time from 2:30 to 3:15 in hopes of getting more customers from the Brooklyn businesses and in an even more important move, he hired broadcaster Red Barber away from MacPhail’s old club, the Cincinnati Reds.

The three New York teams, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees, had agreed among themselves that they would not broadcast the games, feeling that they would cut attendance by supplying free information about the games.

However, MacPhail had not been a party to the agreement and laughed at the other clubs when they complained.

Cincinnati had put lights on Crosley Field and had tripled their attendance in the games played at night.

Again the New York clubs thought it would be foolish to spend money on lights and agreed to have no part of it.

Again MacPhail laughed and borrowed more money ($110,000) to install lights at Ebbets Field.

The team had won only five home games when they played their first night game on June 15, the first of seven scheduled games under the lights.

MacPhail, a master showman, did it up right, scheduling two fife and drum corps to entertain the early crowd, while flag ceremonies and a special sprinting exhibition between Jesse Owens, hero of the 1936 Olympics and Ernie Koy of the Dodgers and Lee Gamble of the Reds.

Owens spotted them both 10 yards but that was just a little too much, finishing third with a sparkling time of :09.7. He also long jumped 23-6 and raced Gibby Brack, Dodgers outfielder, in the 120 yard high hurdlers, with Brack running on the flat. Owens finished second again.

The lights came on at 8:15 to a terrific crowd from the estimated crowd of 40,000 who had jammed into the park that officially held 32,000+.

MacPhail’s luck took an even better turn when Johnny Vander Meer, fresh from a no-hitter over Boston five days before, pitched a second no-hitter. The fact that Cincinnati won 6-0 was of little consequence.

Before the game started, the crowd started buzzing when a large man made his way into the box seats. “It’s Babe,” someone shouted and the fans surged around the former Yankee home run hitter.

“Hi’ya kid” Ruth boomed with his usual salutation to persons whose names he never remembered. “Hey, d’you know that in 23 years in baseball, this will be the first time I ever watched a game in Ebbets Field?”

MacPhail noticed the crush of fans and their positive reaction to the slugger and he made another decision. He announced that Ruth would be the new Dodgers first base coach and that he has been signed for the rest of the 1938 season.

“Babe Ruth belongs in baseball,” he shouted into the public address microphone, “and to prove that I mean what I say, Ruth will be in uniform tomorrow here in Ebbets Field.”

The next day, wearing Brooklyn uniform No. 35, Ruth took batting practice for the first time in three years and although 43 years old and overweight, he took a few cuts and then retired to the dugout.

“Gosh,” he was reported to have said by the papers the next day, although that must have cleaned that up for public consumption. “My chest muscles are so sore it’s tough to swing.” The game drew 28,000 fans who cheered wildly when Ruth did get good wood on the ball.

The Babe was convinced he was in line to become the next Dodgers’ manager, and perhaps that was what MacPhail had told him. It might have happened but his former teammate, Leo Durocher, had joined the team as a coach for the same reason and perhaps with the same promise.

It was inevitable that the two would eventually get into some sort of a confrontation and when Ruth told him, “Stick with me kid, when I take over you’ll have a job with the club” it started.

A shoving match ensued with Leo pushing Ruth back over a bench and into a row of lockers, hoping that someone would quickly end the fight before the big guy got his hands on him and save his life.

That pretty much ended the experiment as far as MacPhail was concerned. He would keep the Babe for the rest of the season and then let him go.

Ruth, unaware of the decision, continued to take “batting practice” and draw fans both at home and on the road, with people coming out early to see him bust one or two.

On July 6 the Dodgers played an exhibition game in Elmira, N.Y., one of the few Dodgers minor league teams, and Ruth played and had three singles.

He slugged a long shot over the right fielders head the next day at another exhibition in Syracuse and jogged to first, then switched positions with first base coach Eppa Rixey, saying “You take it from here, kid.” The combination earned a triple.

A number of other exhibition games were quickly scheduled and Ruth got his final home run in Terre Haute in a 17-2 massacre. Dodgers coach Burleigh Grimes pitched in that game.

Ruth was booted from both ends of a double header on August 11 and the Dodgers won both games.

In September, with his batting eye getting sharper, and the Dodgers settled comfortably in sixth place, Ruth asked to be activated knowing the rosters had been expanded.

Inexplicably, the request was turned down although heaven knows that they could have used his big bat at least in a pinch-hitting role.

The Dodgers issued a press release that insultingly read, “The Brooklyn Club is not a circus. (although you could have fooled the fans by this time) The prime thought of the front office is to build a winning, hustling team and it is trying hard to eliminate the wild-spread idea that the Dodgers are still ‘Daffyness Boys.’ ”

Ruth broke a toe on September 11 and, finally realizing that he had no chance to become the manager, he asked for his release.

Actually, he had been a good coach. He noticed that speedy Ernie Koy was slowing down rounding first and, working with Burleigh Grimes, they determined that he was hitting the bag with the wrong foot.

He was released at the end of the season and he formally thanked the Brooklyn club and the writers for their kindness shown during the year.

Thus ended the career of the greatest baseball player of all time. He would never return to the game and would die 10 years later of throat cancer.