In this post-election, post-World Series moment, the intersection of baseball and politics nearly a century ago is the subject of a lecture this week at the New York State Museum. University of Maryland historian Robert Chiles will speak Thursday in Albany with a talk titled “Babe Ruth Gets Political: Sports and Identity Politics in the Roaring Twenties.” Chiles, research associate in history with the state museum, is co-editor of “New York History” and the author of a book on Gov. Al Smith and the progressive era.
What is meant by identity politics in the context of the 1920s?
Well, that's a great question. The roaring 20s we think of some sort of fun cultural cliches that are going on with flappers and jazz and speakeasies and things like that but it was actually a time of cultural conflict. There was sort of this push for modernity and some of the new culture that I've described new technology, mass culture, like movies and things, but there was also a decade of really just reactionary politics. You have the Klan, getting millions of members, for people who are trying to bring back what they call 100% Americanism and their identity is a sort of old way to native born Protestant America. They reject the sort of children and grandchildren of working-class immigrants, let alone African Americans and others and so they're trying to have this rigid definition of who's a real American. And they do things like, reduce very significantly, immigration, with these harsh quotas in the 1924, law, etc., etc. And so, it's a time when these, what we today call these culture wars or these culture issues of sort of different groups, really battling over the meaning of who gets to be part of the American democracy. They're really coming front and center and of course, as I'm sure most of your listeners know, Governor Smith in the 1920s, was one of the leading figures for a much more inclusive, more pluralistic vision of America, that included marginalized groups like Catholics and Jews and children of immigrants and the working class. And so, in this context, when I use a term like identity politics, of course, in some ways we think of much later in the 20th century. But you see the emergence of those kinds of questions as a big deal in the way people are making political choices.
So, in your book on this era, you make the point that athletes and celebrities in the context of the 1920s getting involved in politics was a relatively new phenomenon. How did Babe Ruth, then at the height of his powers with the Yankees come to endorse a candidate for president?
This is a wonderful question because you're right, he just had won his third world series with the Yankees. He's the biggest star in American sports. He's arguably one of the one or two biggest celebrities in the whole country, even beyond sports. Maybe Charles Lindbergh is above him. But aside from that, everybody knows Babe Ruth, and he already had been inclined toward the Democrats just basically by his background, you know, this is a time not that different from our own time when a lot of people just were with a party, and that's sort of their own quiet identity. But he became more active, in part because his manager, his agent, really the first great sports agent, Christy Walsh, had been enthusiastic about Al Smith's candidacy. But it's interesting, a lot of athletes who were associated with Walsh, ended up sort of endorsing Al Smith. But they really just did it, they sort of signed a document, they took a photo and they moved on with their lives. It's clear from this story that actually Babe Ruth really meant this and he poured himself into it. And so, I think a better answer to your question is not just the Christy Walsh story, but also the fact that Babe Ruth came from an extremely impoverished, under underprivileged, to say the least, background and in his own words. He said often that he admired Al Smith’s story as this working-class kid who had risen up and seemed to give hope to people around the country from these impoverished backgrounds.
Well, we know that Al Smith did not become President Al Smith, so did Babe Ruth's stumping for him have an effect?
Well, it certainly had an effect in causing some entertainment along the way, but it is certainly negligible as far as swaying votes. It got some people talking, it might have gotten the attention of some of his admirers, and he's literally giving campaign speeches for Al Smith, short ones, from the back of the Yankees victory train on the way home from St. Louis after winning the World Series, to mixed reviews. He gives radio speeches, again, he claims that he's getting all this fan mail saying they like what he's saying. But there's also evidence from parts of the Midwest where farmers are like, the things Babe Ruth is saying are just hurting Al Smith’s cause because, of course, Babe Ruth, he represents a world that a lot of Americans, as I was saying earlier, to see as sort of, not the America that they want to believe in. That sort of urban, raucous, modern looking world. And so, he definitely got people talking. There was a point in Louisville, Kentucky when he was at a campaign rally and this sort of old Democratic politician, John Davis is giving an incredibly boring speech, and suddenly, Babe Ruth just destroys his chair somehow, I don't know if he was sitting wrong or something, or if he's just a big guy, but the chair collapses, he almost falls off the stage. And so, he's making headlines, whether intentionally or not, but I don't think he know it. There's no evidence that he got any real votes surge for Al Smith.
Well, today in sports, a lot of athletes face backlash when they get involved in the politics of the day and that sort of breaks down among the divisions that we've seen in modern day America. Did the Babe face any backlash for getting involved in this race?
He really did. It wasn't severe. I mean, he was going to be able to absorb it, but he did get backlash. There were people who were interviewed by the press who said, “we don't really like what he has to say.” But more importantly, there were parts of the media that were incredibly dismissive of what he had to say. The Los Angeles Times, for example, which back then was staunchly Republican newspaper. They ran this editorial, really just being very dismissive of what he had said. They said things like, “Babe Ruth is not permitted to drive voters to the polls with his ponderous slat.” Referring to his heavy hitting baseball bat. And they said, “As a pinch hitter for the Democrats, he's likely to strike out.” They basically said this guy, Babe Ruth, has nothing meaningful to contribute to the political discussion. He's an athlete and nothing more. And so, that's sort of a 1920s version of, you know, go back to what you're doing, shut up and dribble, as some people say, right? That sort of dismissive attitude and actually, that's what I think makes the story even more interesting beyond just the oversized personalities. It's the idea that this is a time in America, when a large segment of the sort of policy making elite thought that the working class and these marginal groups in America didn't have a whole lot to contribute, they were supposed to go and vote, and do as wiser, supposedly wiser minds told them. This was a time when you still, for example, had factory workers go into the workplace, and they would have their bosses putting into their pay envelopes, suggestions on who they should be voting for, or putting up posters of vote for Hoover and keep in keep your job safe or whatever. And so, I think there's a sort of analogy here, because Babe Ruth is from that world. He's not from the factory floor, but he's from that working class world and just like those workers, you have people who are saying to him and other athletes, you don't really have anything important to contribute to this conversation, and I think also since he and some of the other athletes that are involved in this, I mean, people like Lou Gehrig, people like Tony Lazzeri and others, since they come from that marginalized world. On the one hand, they have authentic voices, but on the other hand, they have a peculiar privilege within this culture because they're stars because they're celebrity athletes. Athletes back then weren't as wealthy as they are now, although Babe was doing quite well. But they're able to sort of speak with a voice that they otherwise wouldn't have had from a population that is being very much dismissed.
So, back to the politics side of the ledger, why did Governor Al Smith's 1928 campaign and his progressive brand of politics fall short?
Well, there's a few reasons that all sort of collide. The big one in the sort of, if we want to talk about culture wars, is the fact that he's the first Roman Catholic who's nominated for president by a major party. And again, this is a time when a lot of Americans see this as, at least culturally, a Protestant nation and they see Catholics as a foreign religion. And so, the Klan is burning crosses to protest Governor Smith's campaign appearances around the country and they're sending out all sorts of viciously anti Catholic propaganda. That obviously doesn't help the fact that he is unabashedly a New York City guy. Like, he doesn't pretend, he's a very authentic politician, which is laudable, but it also means that he's going on the radio and speaking with an intense, Lower East Side bowery brogue that's for a lot of Americans, I mean, in our part of the country, it's charming but for a lot of Americans, they found it off putting. The fact that he's associated, he's a major, not associated with, he's a major player in the Tammany Hall political machine, obviously, was off putting to many parts of the country. The fact that as the governor, he was openly critical of prohibition, certainly rubbed many people the wrong way. The fact that he was questioning the harsh immigration quotas of the 1920s made a lot of nativist anti-immigrant Americans upset. And I think on top of all of that, is the fact that as governor of New York, and this is also by the way, I'll say, all those things are what made him popular with some Americans, right? The fact that he sort of has this, he seems to symbolize a lot of their hopes for more inclusion and a sort of more pluralistic society that includes people like Catholics and Jews, and even a lot of African Americans can see themselves as part of this. But also, on top of all of that, in New York, as you just mentioned, he was remarkably progressive, and the labor reforms and the protections and the social welfare initiatives and all of those things, and all of this involves a lot of big spending. That had made him a very successful governor of New York and very popular. But it also opened him up to criticism because he seems to be a bit outside the conservative mainstream of 1920s politics. And you have to remember that in 1928, it appeared, it turned out to be rather superficial, but it appeared to many Americans that the economy was doing great, that Coolidge Hoover prosperity was strong. And so, Herbert Hoover, the Republican nominee, who had been the Commerce Secretary was very much credited with the prosperity of the roaring 20s. And so, even if Al Smith hadn't been a Catholic grandson of immigrants with a deep New York accent, it was still probably a good year to be a Republican and that wasn't a good year to be Al Smith.
Did Babe Ruth ever get involved in politics after this time?
Never as actively as this he did. Once in a while, make some fun remarks. He actually remained friendly with Al Smith. They went golfing sometimes in Florida a couple of years later. The funniest political remark of Babe Ruth was a couple of years after the election. So, as you mentioned, Herbert Hoover triumphs, and it's a landslide. I mean, awesome. It gets beaten pretty badly. And of course, then, less than a year later, the stock market crashes and we are plummeting, month by month, year by year into the depths of the Great Depression and as all of that's going on is the early 1930s, Babe Ruth is up for contract re-negotiations and he's asking for a sum that reporters pointed out to him is more than the President of the United States makes and did you really think that's appropriate? Babe Ruth to be asking for that much money and they Ruth shoots back at the press, “What the hell does Hoover have to do it?” And I'm sorry for swearing on the air, but I'm quoting Babe Ruth. He says, “What the hell does Hoover have to do with it? And anyway, I had a better year than he did.” And that's in the depths of the depression, something that was a little bit of a burn, but also it was very much an accurate statement.
