Let’s go back in time and imagine that, as the 1931 baseball season rolled along, ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Senators manager Dick Hoblitzell told some rollicking stories. Maybe he sat in the clubhouse, surrounded by his players, and talked about the 1914 season in which he played first base for the Boston Red Sox.
And maybe he told the players that, during the ’14 season, he roomed with 19-year-old Babe Ruth. It was the Babe’s rookie year.
The storytelling probably took place at old Kanawha Park, a 3,500-seat wooden structure built in 1916. It was located on the future site of Watt Powell Park and current site of the CAMC Cancer Center. The clubhouse was down the left-field line, not far from the intersection of 35th Street and MacCorkle Avenue, a two-lane street in those days.
Keep in mind that Hoblitzell may have been more than just Babe’s roommate. Evidence suggests he served as Babe’s mentor. Maybe he patiently worked to modify Babe’s crude behavior, allowing him to become the most celebrated sports figure in our nation’s history. We can only speculate.
Hoblitzell, a Wood County native, who played football at the University of Pittsburgh, signed with the Red Sox in 1914 after five seasons with the Cincinnati Reds.
Ruth, meanwhile, had recently left a Baltimore reform school and, upon joining the Red Sox in 1914, had not yet matured beyond his untamed youth, during which a Baltimore judge had ruled him incorrigible and sent him off to the reform school.
As a Red Sox rookie, Babe drank heavily and sometimes embarrassed teammates with vulgarities in restaurants and elsewhere. Booze and debauchery threatened to undermine his baseball future.
But how did Hoblitzell and young Ruth become roommates? Were they thrown together randomly or did Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan see that the talented but undisciplined Ruth needed mentoring and chose the older and more responsible Hoblitzell, a veteran of five big-league seasons, who had attended college and, by all accounts, was a great guy.
Hoblitzell was a certified dentist, having acquired his license in 1912, and had practiced dentistry with his brother in downtown Cincinnati during the off-season. He not only had played big-league ball but had excelled, particularly in his six seasons with the Red Sox, in which he often batted cleanup on two World Series champions. For the 1918 season, he was named Red Sox captain.
Ten years ago, I interviewed Hoblitzell’s 86-year-old daughter, Connie Michael, who said her father felt obligated to keep Babe in line. “He said one of his main duties,†Michael recalled from her home in Florida, “was keeping Babe from being out all night and keeping him sober enough that he could play ball the next day.’’
Did Hoblitzell do so on his own or did the Red Sox manager specifically tell him to make sure Babe arrived at the ballpark free of intoxication and capable of playing good baseball?
We can only speculate but it’s reasonable to believe that our man Hoblitzell, a West Virginia native, had a positive impact on Babe Ruth’s life.
Whatever the case, it’s also reasonable to conclude that Hoblitzell witnessed some interesting and perhaps life-changing moments in Ruth’s maturation. His daughter said her father occasionally reminisced about his life with Babe but, in her presence, kept the stories G-rated.
Senators skipper
On Thursday, April 2, 1931, ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Senators owner Watt Powell hired Hoblitzell as manager. They then visited the Daily Mail office on Virginia and McFarland streets and talked with sportswriters about the approaching season, though Hoblitzell declined to make predictions.
At the time, Hoblitzell was an experienced minor league manager and, after a respectable first half of the season, his ’31 Senators caught fire and won 16 of their final 18 regular-season games to earn a spot in the postseason playoffs. In doing so, they often packed Kanawha Park with joyous crowds that sometimes exceeded the park’s 3,500 capacity.
Daily Mail sports editor Dick Hudson called it the “most exciting season in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä baseball history.â€
Down the stretch, the Senators mashed their way to victory. “An avalanche of base hits rained like machine-gun bullets from the wicked wooden war clubs of the Hoblitzell clan,†the Gazette reported in the colorful jargon of the era. It was also a colorful era for nicknames. The Senators had a catcher named Vody “Raw Meat†Mackie.
The team played in the Class C Middle Atlantic League, which comprised 12 teams — the Beckley Blue Knights, Charleroi (Pennsylvania) Governors, Clarksburg Generals, Cumberland (Maryland) Colts, Fairmont Black Diamonds, Huntington Boosters, Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Johnnies, Scottdale (Pennsylvania) Cardinals and Wheeling Stogies. Two franchises played in three cities each that year — one played in Hagerstown (Maryland), Parkersburg and Youngstown (Ohio); the other played in Jeannette (Pennsylvania), Beaver Falls (Pennsylvania) and Altoona (Pennsylvania).
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On Sept. 12, 1931, the Senators completed a three-game sweep of the Johnstown Johnnies at Kanawha Park to virtually clinch the second-half championship and secure the playoff spot. The Gazette estimated the crowd at 5,000 amid the Great Depression’s darkest hours. Even the governor, Preston County native William Conley, attended.
Playing for a championship
The winning run scored on a bases-loaded walk in the 11th inning. Pandemonium followed. “Fans threw their hats in the air,†said the Gazette, “and screamed until none could be heard.†The fans, added the Gazette, were “half-mad.†They then surged onto the field and lifted the winning pitcher, Bill Kermode, onto their shoulders.
Amid the chaos, fans surrounded team owner Watt Powell, for whom the city’s new ballpark would be named 18 years later and pummeled him with congratulatory pats on the back.
Speaking to a Daily Mail reporter, Powell said: “The fans came down from all the creeks to see the battlin’ Senators of ours.â€
The losing pitcher, incidentally, was Denny Galehouse, who in 1948 would gain baseball infamy as part of the Boston Red Sox’s 86-year run of futility. It was Galehouse who inexplicably was chosen by manager Joe McCarthy to pitch the Red Sox’s winner-take-all playoff game at home against Cleveland that year.
McCarthy originally had selected lefthander Mel Parnell, a talented rookie, but switched to the 36-year-old Galehouse, a spot starter who had pitched only twice in the previous three weeks. McCarthy later explained that he didn’t trust a rookie lefthander in Fenway Park, a house of horrors for lefties. And besides, said the manager, the wind was blowing out to left that day.
The Red Sox lost 8-3, and Galehouse lasted only four innings. He would pitch only two more innings in a career that spanned 15 seasons.
Against the Senators that day in 1931, Galehouse pitched all 11 innings but, after delivering the bases-loaded walk, trudged off the field toward the left-field clubhouse, working his way through the multitudes.
A few days later, heading into the postseason championship, the ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä players and media attended a banquet at the Kanawha Hotel at Virginia and Summers streets.
They then faced the Cumberland Colts in a best-of-seven series for the league title and, after splitting the first two games in Cumberland, returned to Kanawha Park for the third game in front of 5,500 fans. Many of the overflow crowd stood or sat in the roped-off outfield. All seats were filled an hour before game time.
Meanwhile, the game was delayed for 17 minutes because the umpires were stuck in a Kanawha City traffic jam.
The Senators won to take a 2-1 series lead but lost the next three to lose the series.
On the field
During the 1914 season, Hoblitzell made quite a contribution to the Red Sox, in addition to whatever mentoring he might have bestowed on Babe Ruth.
With two weeks left in the season, Hoblitzell was batting .350, which was second in the American League. He slumped a bit but still finished with a respectable .319 average, though he appeared in only 69 games and therefore did not qualify as one of the league leaders.
In 11 seasons with the Reds and Red Sox, he batted .278 — a solid figure in the dead-ball era — and then began a minor league managerial career, working in Reading, Pennsylvania; Akron, Ohio; and Charlotte, North Carolina, where he spent four seasons. The folks in Charlotte honored him with a Dick Hoblitzell Day, and he considered retiring there. He also hoped to someday manage the Red Sox.
He eventually moved back to Wood County and bought a farm near Parkersburg. In his later years, he served as county sheriff and hosted a sports radio program. He occasionally showed off a scrapbook of his career highlights. He practiced a little dentistry, but only on family members and neighbors.
He died in Parkersburg on Nov. 14, 1962. He was 74.
