Page "lore" Paragraph 1015

The greatest team of this period was unquestionably the New York Yankees, bought by brewery millions and made into a ball club by men named Ed Barrow and Miller Huggins.

Boston fans sometimes liked to wring some wry satisfaction out of the fact that most of the great 1923-27 crew were graduates of the Red Sox -- sold to millionaires Huston and Ruppert by a man who could not deny them their most trifling desire.

Ruth himself, still owning his farm in Massachusetts and an interest in the Massachusetts cigar business that printed his round boyish face on the wrappers, had led the parade down from Fenway Park, followed by pitchers Carl Mays, Leslie `` Joe '' Bush, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, and Sam Jones, catcher Wally Schang, third baseman Joe Dugan ( who completed the `` playboy trio '' of Ruth, Dugan, and Hoyt ), and shortstop Everett Scott.

By 1926, when the mighty Yanks were at their mightiest, only a few of these were left but they still shone brightest, even beside able and agile rookies like Tony Lazzeri ( who managed never to have one of his epileptic fits on the field ), Mark Koenig, Lou Gehrig, George Pipgras, and gray-thatched Earl Combs.

The deeds of this team, through two seasons and in the two World's Series that followed, have been written and talked about until hardly a word is left to be said.

But there is one small episode that a few New York fans who happened to sit in the cheap seats for one World's Series game in 1926 like best to recall.

Babe Ruth, as he always did in the Stadium, played right field to avoid having the sun in his eyes, and Tommy Thevenow, a rather mediocre hitter who played shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals, knocked a ball with all his might into the sharp angle formed by the permanent stands and the wooden bleachers, where Ruth could not reach it.

The ball lay there, shining white on the grass in view of nearly every fan in the park while Ruth, red-necked with frustration, charged about the small patch of ground screaming, `` Where's the -- -ing ball ''??

But, as he snarled unhappily when the inning was over, `` not a sonofabitch in the place would tell me '', so little Tommy ran all the way home.