In the first game of a twinbill, Babe Ruth hits his 50th home run in the 1st inning, off the Senators’ Jose Acosta. He then adds number 51 in a 4-for-4 second game, a 2 – 1 win, to give the Yankees a sweep. The other three hits off loser Jim Shaw are by Del Pratt.
In Boston, 33,000 are on hand for a doubleheader and to see Babe Ruth return to the Yankee lineup. The Babe hits his 45th homer in the opener to give New York a 5 – 3 win. In the nitecap, Carl Mays pitches to a mixture of boos and cheers. Mays takes a 5 – 3 lead into the 9th, then he fails to back up home on a play at the plate. A loose ball allows Joe Bush to score the winning run and Boston wins, 6 – 5.
1920 – Cleveland SS Ray Chapman, 29, is beaned by a Carl Mays pitch. A righthanded batter who crowds the plate, Chapman freezes and fails to get out of the way of the submarine delivery. He is carried from the field and dies the next day from a fractured skull. Mays, a surly, unpopular pitcher, is the target of fans’ and players’ outrage. Chapman, a Cleveland favorite since breaking in in 1912, had been married the previous year. In October his wife will receive a full World Series share, $3,986.34. The incident has no effect on Mays’s pitching. One week later he will blank Detroit, 10 – 0, and go on to win 26 and lose 11. Joe Sewell will be called up to take Chapman’s place, and for 14 years he will be the hardest man to strike out in the Major Leagues.
Detroit Tigers pitcher Howard Ehmke wins the American League’s shortest game ever when he defeats the New York Yankees, 1 – 0, in one hour, thirteen minutes. With no outs and two on in the 5th inning‚ the Yanks fail to capitalize as Ping Bodie falls for the hidden ball trick applied by 2B Ralph Young.
1920 – Babe Ruth becomes the first player in MLB history to hit 30 home runs in one season. The shot off Dickey Kerr of the White Sox breaks his record of 29 from the previous year. He added a second home run later in the game, but the Yankees lost at the Polo Grounds, 8-5. Ruth finished with an astounding 54 homers in 1920, outhomering every other MLB team except the Phillies (64).
The fans are flocking to see the mighty Babe Ruth hit home runs (12 in June). A twin bill with the Browns draws a Polo Grounds record of 38,823, the third record-breaker of the year.
Babe Ruth, an accomplished hurler acquired from Boston in the offseason for his hitting prowess, bats cleanup in the Yankees’ lineup, and also gets the win when he tosses four innings as the starter in the team’s 14-7 victory over Washington at the Polo Grounds. During his 15 seasons with New York, the ‘Sultan of Swat’ will take the mound just five times for the club, including a complete-game victory in 1933.
1920 – Babe Ruth reacts to his recent sale to the Yankees in the Boston Evening Standard saying, “Frazee is not good enough to own any ball club, especially one in Boston.”
“I think the Yankees are taking a gamble. While Ruth is undoubtedly the greatest hitter the game has ever seen, he is likewise one of the most selfish and inconsiderate men ever to put on a baseball uniform.” – HARRY FRAZEE, owner of the Red Sox defending his trade of Babe Ruth to New York.Harry Frazee defends selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for cash by calling his former player “one of the most selfish and inconsiderate men ever to put on a baseball uniform.” The Red Sox owner laments the popular player had become impossible to deal with, and the team could no longer put up with the Bambino’s eccentricities.
On January 5, 1920, in perhaps the most famous transaction in baseball history, the New York Yankees formally announce the purchase of outfielder-pitcher Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for $100,000. The trade had actually been made on December 26, 1919, but the announcement was delayed until Ruth could come to contract terms…
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