Mable's Story Chapter 68

Interview with Babe Ruth

The trip to the press area in front of the locker room took us back along the south side of the stadium again. The lockers were in the back area of the Drake Fieldhouse, adjacent to the stadium. They played basketball in the fieldhouse and had an indoor track. It struck me that Drake University did not have a swimming pool. I could never have attended Drake. I needed to be in the pool every day.

In the press area, there were a few wooden chairs in one corner of the room, positioned around a sturdy square table. A stack of newspapers and magazines were in a semi-straightened stack on top of the worn table top. Ted motioned me over there with a wave of his pencil. We sat down and I retrieved my notebook from my purse again. It occurred to me that I might want to jot down the questions I had decided to ask, as I felt the anxiety rising in my neck and face. It felt warm and probably looked red, but I took a deep breath and took my pencil in hand. I turned to a clean page about halfway back in the notebook and wrote “Babe Ruth” at the top of the page. It was a milestone in my life as an athlete, as a journalist, and as a baseball fan. A huge milestone. Bigger than I knew at the time, for certain.

I wrote down the three questions, one at the top of each page, leaving plenty of room to transcribe his answers. I was ready. I closed the notebook, and then closed my eyes, feeling a little prayer was in order to calm my nerves. I would tell you my prayer, if I could remember it. Even though I cannot remember it, I am quite sure it was answered.

The door with a Drake bulldog face emblazoned on it in thick blue and white paint swung open wide. The Coach Williams stepped in and the Great Bambino was on his right. It was momentous. Ted caught the eye of the coach and waved him over to us. Mother, along with Uncle Albert, was seated on a long navy-blue davenport along the wall next to our table. Burnie and his parents were standing right next to them, with Burnie sort of leaning against the wall.

Ted stood up and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go meet Babe Ruth, star girl reporter,” he said.

The coach introduced Ted to Babe, and then Ted introduced my mother, the Orwigs, Burnie, and my uncle to Babe.

“This is the young lady I wrote to you about,” Ted explained. Babe was smiling and nodding.

“The swimmer?” asked Babe Ruth. He already knew who I was? Ted had not told me that!

The Babe continued, “This is the sports editor and the little girl who beat all those men swimming?”

Oh my, I must have let my mouth fall open. Questions raced through my brain. How did he know all this? Ted wrote to him about me? Why hadn’t Ted told me? How much did Ted tell him?

Both Ted and the Babe must have seen my gaping mouth or at least recognized my enormous amazement, because Ted quickly explained.

“I needed to let them know that we wanted a special interview, Mable; that there was a reason to set aside a few extra minutes for this,” Ted explained. “The Babe here was all for it and looking forward to talking to you, from what he wrote to me.”

That world-renowned baseball giant was just standing there grinning at me. I smiled back. Then I stuck out my hand. “I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Ruth. Thank you for accepting this invitation to meet with me. I just have a few questions for you, for the Daily Iowan.”

I fumbled to reach back to the table where I had just been sitting. I needed to get my notebook. Burnie reached over, grabbed it off the stack of newspapers, and shoved it into my hands. I mumbled my gratitude, I think.

Babe spoke right up, “Not so fast, Missy. I have a few questions for you first. We’ll talk about me soon enough.”

Coach Williams from Drake spoke up, “We have people waiting outside, remember?”

“Oh, there will still be plenty of them when we get out there, pal. I want to talk to Mable first. I promised,” was Babe’s retort. Then he winked at me and added, “Never break a promise to a lady, coach.” He continued, “So you followed all the sports in your high school, and were a sports editor, huh?”

I nodded.

“And you beat a bunch of men swimming in the river?”

I nodded again, nervously.

“And you broke a bunch of swimming records and tried to get them to let you be on the boys’ swimming team?”

I kept nodding.

Babe let out a big belly laugh. “Good thing I’m not the reporter,” he chided. “You sure aren’t giving me any answers I could jot down in my notebook!” Then everyone in the room laughed.

He calmed the laughter with a little clearing of his throat. “Well, that is very impressive for a teenage girl, Mable. You are quite a sports hero yourself, aren’t you? And now you are in college, so to top it all off, you must also be an excellent student, huh?”

Ted stepped in, trying to take the focus away from me. I appreciated all of Babe Ruth’s kind comments and the fact that he took the time to read what Ted had sent him, but Ted could tell that all the attention was flustering me.

“Why don’t we step over here to the table and have ourselves a little interview, Mr. Ruth, so Mable can ask you her questions for the Daily Iowan?” Ted suggested.

“Oh sure,” Babe replied, “but you had better start calling me ‘Babe’, or we cannot really be friends. That ‘Mr. Ruth’ thing is just too formal, as well as I feel I know you Des Moines and Drake folks. We have had ourselves quite a fine weekend of sports here in the middle of Iowa. I will not be forgetting this beautiful city, the sporting baseball fans and,” he added, “this Drake team. Great young fellas! What an afternoon of fun I have had!”

I decided to start the interview.

“May I quote you on that, Babe?” I asked quickly, whipping open my notebook and starting to write.

“Sure you can, Sweetheart. What else would you like to know from ol’ Babe?”

I flipped back to the pages where my questions were.

“Well, first I would like you to tell me about your most important sports memory, or perhaps accomplishment. What do you think if you had to pick just one?” I asked in the most professional interviewer tone I could muster.

I think it stymied him for a moment, as I hoped it would. My journalism professor at the university told us that a common question was okay to start an interview with, but we should try to make it so the subject would have to give a narrow answer…a specific answer. It would make them pause and think for a moment, instead of giving a “canned” answer to an often-asked question. From the look on his face, I think I succeeded in making Babe pause for a moment before he answered.

“Hard to choose just one,” he started with.

“Sorry, but you must choose just one for this question,” I replied, feigning an apology.

“I got ya,” he said, “Give me a little minute, here.”

I waited, we all waited. Babe Ruth had rolled his eyes upward and appeared to be looking for an answer written on the ceiling.

“It has to be today. It has to be. I know I have set records in baseball, but today I played football for the first time in my life. Wore a real uniform. Ran fellas down and tackled ‘em. Got tackled, or should I say pushed down? And I scored a real touchdown. Caught the pass by myself and ran it into the end zone. That honestly felt as good as when I set the homerun season record. It was a big ol’ first for me. Probably won’t ever do it again, either. I hope to set some more baseball records, if that old buzzard Ty Cobb will let me, but I most likely ain’t gonna be playing much more college football or any other kind of ball with a pigskin. Just ain’t my game, but today it was. Yep, thinkin’ about what I did this afternoon, it is by far the best sports memory I have.”

What a great answer! I was writing as fast as I could.

“I got that last part, Mable,” Ted assured me. “If you have the first half, I got the rest. Next question?”

“Are you ready, Mr. Ruth?” I asked.

“Is that the next question?” he joked. “And don’t forget my name is Babe, Missy.”

I countered with, “No sir, I’m sorry, I won’t forget and don’t you forget my name is Mable, Babe.” I pointedly spoke his name.

Everyone laughed heartily again. He was an entertaining man. A heck of a funny fella, and the greatest baseball player ever. No wonder people all over America, and the world, loved him.

The Drake coach was still looking at his watch, even though we had been promised ten minutes and I had only used maybe two minutes to ask and get the first one answered. Perhaps he was including all our introductions in the ten-minute count. I had to finish.

“My next question is, have you ever quit anything? I mean quit something you started because it was too hard, or took up too much time, or maybe even wished you had not started?” I looked right into his startled eyes, beneath his bushy brows and sun-wrinkled forehead, He did look surprised. So did Ted, when I looked at him, and so did Burnie.

“That’s a different kind of question, Mable,” he began. “I am gonna have to think about this one, too. You got a special skill at askin’ hard questions?”

I did not answer that question, thinking it to be rhetorical. However, I nodded in an affirmative manner.

“All right, then. I’ll answer. Nope, I never quit nothin’. Ever. Never quit nothin’ in my whole life. I don’t quit.” He looked back at me square in the eyes. “Babe don’t quit. Write that down, Mable. I never quit nothin’ in my whole life. Ya got it written down?” he asked firmly.

“Yessir. I have it written down.” I replied firmly. He had gotten so suddenly serious.

The Drake coach tried to lighten the moment, I believe, by chiming in with, “That’s why he made such a good Bulldog today. Bulldogs just don’t quit, right Babe?”

“Nope, they don’t,” he said, but then he pressed harder, “because it don’t matter whether you are a bulldog or a goose. Ya should never quit nothin’. If ya start somethin’, ya need to finish it…no matter what. Why the heck would you start something, and then quit. That ain’t no way to win, that’s for sure.”

He was so adamant, Ted felt compelled to step in also, injecting, “I think she was just curious, Babe. You know some people get beat down and quit one thing, but it makes them more determined and successful from then on. Is that what you meant, Mable?”

Babe spoke up, this time in my defense. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean no harm. I just got this thing about quittin’. Never believed in it. Never will. There ain’t no good excuse for quittin’. I ain’t offended, Mable. Don’t you worry.” He smiled at me and gave me a nod and a wink. I smiled back quickly and then immediately glanced over at Burnie. My buddy Burnie had seen the Sultan of Swat give me a big wink and so he was also grinning broadly.

I dove head first into the ongoing fray I had created with, “I think what I meant was have you ever felt beaten down by things going on around you and it was difficult to go on? You have honestly never felt like you might want to quit?”

Babe nodded affirmative, several times. “I get what you mean, Mable. You want to know if I have ever been tempted to give up? Huh?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” I replied, relieved that I had salvaged this question, with help from Babe Ruth himself.

“Yes, I have been tempted. I was tempted when I first got into major league baseball. I pitched damn good for the Red Sox that first year with them, but the bums said they had too many players on their roster and moved me down to the minor leagues, to the Providence Grays. It was a dark time for me. I thought hard about giving up…about quitting, but Brother Matthias at the boys’ home had always called me a winner. He believed in me. I owed a lot, and I still owe a lot, to folks who have believed in me all along the way, clear to today. I helped that Providence team win the pennant, and the Red Sox was real glad to get me back. I’m sure glad I didn’t let that little setback make me quit.”

“Do you mean ‘owed’ like a debt? Like you had to pay them back for believing in you?” I asked.

“Well, kinda, but not exactly. I worked hard to get where I am and to get people to believe in a bum like me. I feel like the only way to get beat, for me, is to quit. So, I never quit. No one can ever beat me.” He almost bragged. “No one can ever beat me. You cannot beat a person who won’t give up, Mable. Cannot beat ‘em.”

“Wow, that is a whole different way of looking at quitting.” I said, awestruck by his strong feelings about this. I had stirred up a beehive in him. He spoke with such passion. It was like he knew that I was thinking about giving up, and was telling me not to. Had someone told him? Ted did not know, Mother did not know. The only one there who knew was Burnie, and he had been with me all afternoon. With no opportunity to speak to the Babe alone. It was like Babe Ruth could read my mind.

Babe Ruth was watching me, even though the coach was looking at his watch.

“I hope you are not still getting hassled because you are a girl, are you Mable?” he asked me suddenly.

“No, no, not at all…well, maybe a little at the Daily Iowan, but I can handle it, and I think they will be begging to print this story.”

“Is the swimming too hard at your university? Did you make the team?” He kept pressing me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mother and my aunt and uncle perk up their ears. This was becoming a case of Babe Ruth interviewing me!

“No, sir, freshmen can’t swim on the varsity or in meets. I’m not allowed to compete this year at all, except in synchronized swimming.”

“You ain’t thinking about quittin’ are ya?” he just asked me straight out!

“Well, some of my classes are really hard…I’m not getting the grades I want right now, but I know I can, someday.” Boy, I was really trying to come up with excuses fast. This interview was not going like I thought it would!

He proceeded to hit the nail on the head with, “Well, you ain’t quittin’, Mable. You ain’t giving up. When you quit, they win. Those swimmin’ folks who won’t let you swim, those writer fellas who think you can’t write, and those classes you got…you seem purty smart to me. This ain’t no time to quit. Like I said, you can’t beat a man who won’t quit. That goes for you, too. If a girl won’t give up, she can’t be beat. Ya hear me? They can’t beat a girl who don’t quit.” His eyes drilled me with a look he usually reserved for pitchers like Lefty Grove of Philadelphia.

I stammered, “But, when I am at the university, I miss my mother. Besides that, my father and grandma just died this year. It’s hard.”

“Don’t matter how hard it is, little lady. You don’t quit. Quitters quit, not you. You already beat all those men, and you set records. That ain’t easy. You are tougher than you think. You ain’t quittin’.”

“I don’t know,” is all I could say at that point.

“I know! I know for sure you will be beat if you quit. Your pa would not want you to quit, I am sure of that. Right, Ma?” as he glanced at Mother.

She slowly shook her head in a ‘no’ gesture. She was almost stiff with fright. Not of Babe Ruth, but at the idea of me quitting. I had really made a mess of this, and the coach kept looking at his watch and trying to guide Babe Ruth over to the outside door, where hundreds of fans were waiting.

“Any other questions, Mable?” asked Ted. Now it was my turn to simply shake my head ‘no’.

“Then thank Mr. Ruth for his time and his wise advice, girl reporter, because he has to go now,” said Ted.

I stuck out my hand to the larger-than-life Babe Ruth. He grabbed my puny hand in his large paw and held it firmly. His eyes grabbed my eyes, and he said, “You can’t beat a girl who won’t quit.”

His eyes continued to hold mine, then he loosed his hand from mine, gave it a fatherly pat, and winked at me again. “You go get ‘em, Tiger!” he said, and then he was gone. The blue door closed and I stood facing it, with my back to everyone else in the room.

I had interviewed Babe Ruth. He had just changed the course of my life. I felt it deep inside me. Turning around, I saw Mother hug Uncle Albert. Burnie’s parents hugged him. Ted and Burnie shook hands, then they both came to me and put their arms around my shoulders, one on each side of me.

“Great interview, star girl reporter,” Ted said. “That sure will give you plenty to write about. I expect I will see that on the front page of that Daily Iowan rag.”

Burnie laughed. “Don’t suppose you will have to have that “I want to quit” talk with your mother now, huh?”

“Okay, all of you. I am not quitting. I am done with thinking about quitting. We are done talking about quitting. No one will be beating me at anything, any time soon. You heard the Babe,” I reminded them all, “You can’t beat a girl who won’t quit.”