Funny thing about legends. The further back you go, the closer to the truth you get.
Charlie Devens can close his eyes and go all the way back to the sounds, to the smells, to his vantage point from the visitors’ dugout at Wrigley Field just yards away from one of the biggest sports fables of them all.
Sitting in the den of his home south of Boston, the 93-year-old Devens is the oldest known surviving member of the Yankees or the Cubs, who will revive their long-dormant rivalry this week at Wrigley Field for the first time since 1938. He remembers well the October day 71 years ago when Babe Ruth further cemented his mythical status with the soon-to-be-dubbed “Called Shot.”
It was Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, after the Yankees had established their superiority in the first two games. Devens, a rookie pitcher fresh out of Harvard, watched as Ruth strode to the plate in the fifth inning after having slugged a three-run homer in the first.
The Cubs, as was reported in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, “were feeling pretty pert . . . and scented victory on dear old Wrigley Field.” They had come back from three runs down to tie the score in the previous inning, and as Ruth stepped in against starting pitcher Charlie Root, Cubs players let him have it.
Root got ahead of Ruth 0-2, and pitchers Guy Bush and Bob Smith leaned out of the Cubs’ dugout heckling, Smith making a gesture that he was putting the “whammy” on Ruth.
The Babe simply smiled.
“That’s only two strikes, boys. I still have one coming,” he shouted in their direction.
“Ruth was being ridden by the Cubs the entire series and he would ride them right back,” Devens recalled. “At the time, I did think Babe was pointing to the bleachers, but [shortstop] Frankie Crosetti told me no, he put up one finger to indicate he had another strike coming.”
Ruth sent the next pitch, a changeup low and outside, on a line to dead center field. As he circled the bases, the Tribune said: “He had to slow down so as to have time to exhaust all the kidding he had stored up for delivery to friends in the Cubs’ coop.”
Lou Gehrig would follow Ruth and keep pace with his second homer of the afternoon as the Yankees defeated the Cubs 7-5. They completed the Series sweep the following day with a 13-6 victory.
Days later the Yankees would be blasted in a Tribune headline as “All Burlesque and Batting,” but columnist Westbrook Pegler had a different take.
He proclaimed that “the people who saw Babe Ruth play that ballgame and hit those two home runs against the Cubs came away from the baseball plant with a spiritual memento of the most gorgeous display of humor, athletic art and championship class any performer in any game has ever presented.”
Like any great performer, Ruth seemed to enjoy perpetuating the greatest story of all.
“I think Frankie Crosetti was right, but Babe never denied that he was pointing to the stands,” Devens said, chuckling. “Still it was quite extraordinary to see him point, then hit the very next pitch out of the ballpark.”
Ensconced among his books and his photographs and in the company of his second wife, Betsy, Devens gazes at a perfectly preserved picture of himself and Ruth and is transported back in time.
“With my salary and a half-share in the World Series, it amounted to about $10,000,” Devens said. “That was the depths of the Depression. I thought I was the richest man in the world and I think I damn near was.”
He also recalled thinking that the Cubs, whom the Yankees would sweep again in the 1938 World Series with a young outfielder named Joe DiMaggio, “were not much good, but we didn’t know much about them because they were in the other league . . . and I was wrong because they were pretty good. They did make it to two World Series [against the Yankees].”
The Cubs were in three World Series in the ’30s, losing to the Yankees in ’32 and ’38 and to the Detroit Tigers in ’35.
They were confident going into the ’32 Series, “curious about [the 37-year-old] Ruth’s recent stomachaches” according to reports but convinced, as Guy Bush proclaimed, “All we’ve got to do is stop two men–Ruth and Gehrig.”
Ruth, sporting a rubber corset around his ample midsection, was at least in fine form verbally. He had a particularly good time razzing the Cubs for not voting shortstop Mark Koenig and Rogers Hornsby a World Series share that year. Hornsby had been fired as manager in August.
It was a move repeated in ’38 when players elected not to give Charlie Grimm a Series share after catcher Gabby Hartnett replaced him.
The Cubs slighted the injured Koenig, who was Ruth’s pal and a Yankees teammate from 1925-30, with a half-share because he had played in only 33 games.
“So they’re going to give you a half-share, are they, Mark?” Ruth teased Koenig as he trotted out to right field in Game 2. “Well, you had better collect that five bucks right now.”
Ruth was obviously not bothered by his stomach distress, which, said Devens, was not a rare occurrence.
“He used to take a little bicarbonate of soda in the seventh inning of each game and he’d be fine,” Devens said. “He used to drink a great deal, but I never saw him drink at the ballpark and I never heard him say he had a hangover. He always played and he was still darn good.”
Devens was equally in awe of Ruth and Gehrig.
“Ruth was a nice guy,” he said. “He drank a bit, chased the girls, but otherwise he was OK.
“Gehrig was all right, but I remember he was totally different from Ruth. He was more serious and he was difficult. He could be very temperamental. But he was great to have on your team.”
Devens contends players of his era would have fared equally well against players of today.
“I don’t think there was ever a ballplayer any better than Joe DiMaggio, for instance,” he said.
Devens starred in football, baseball and hockey at Harvard and was a boys champion in tennis before signing with the Yankees, for whom he pitched a six-hit, two-run complete game in his only appearance in ’32. He joked he “almost died of fright that I might have to pitch in a World Series game,” but he never got to.
He said his best pitch in those days before radar guns was his fastball, which he estimates he could throw at more than 90 m.p.h.
“Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, they didn’t do anything to me,” he laughed.
Although a highly regarded prospect, Devens left the game after 1934 at 24 with a 5-3 lifetime record and 82 innings pitched when he married Edith Prescott Walcott, the granddaughter of former Massachusetts Gov. Roger Walcott. She would be his wife for the next 66 years.
“I would have liked to have played for two or three more years, but as I said at the time, it was not much of a life for a girl to be married to a ballplayer, away half the time,” he said.
He went into banking and eventually was elected president of Incorporated Investors and did well in the stock market.
He also had a distinguished military career. A lieutenant commander aboard the USS Intrepid in World War II, Devens was awarded the Bronze Star for his heroic actions when the ship came under Japanese fire near the Philippines in 1944.
Although congestive heart failure has slowed Devens over the last several months, the father of five children and grandfather of eight enjoys the company of his second wife, Betsy Emmet, whom he married three years ago. He also appreciates the blessing of being able to reminisce about a long and fruitful life. Fans still send him baseballs to sign.
“I’ve enjoyed myself,” he said. “I was anxious to see if I could play major-league baseball and I came to the conclusion that I could. I went to school with Franklin Roosevelt’s children and when he was down south and we were in spring training, he came into the dugout and talked to me. He was a very nice man.”
Devens smiled sweetly.
“I have all kinds of things to remember,” he said. “I have no complaints.”
