[Big Six]

Boston Globe, May 12, 1923

RUTH TRADED TO NEW YORK
Red Sox Trade Slugger, Del Paddock to Yankees
Young Gehrig, Schalk, Brady Come to Red Sox


BOSTON—Throughout their long period of sustained excellence, the Boston Red Sox have never been shy about using trades as a means of strengthening their team. The team’s management has made a habit of trading veteran stars, such as Bill Peterson, Chuck Rose, and Harry Hooper, for young players of promise. In this manner, such Sox standouts as Joe Judge, Irish Meusel, and Johnny Bassler were acquired. As a rule, the Bostons have traded from strength: swapping players at positions where they have surplus talent in order to bolster those where they are thinner.

Yesterday, the Red Sox made a trade that somewhat departs from this successful formula. They traded away a player in his prime, the most feared home run hitter in the game. Babe Ruth, who leads the major leagues with ten home runs, will now be swinging his heavy bat for the New York Yankees.

Skeptical rooters, especially those of a casual variety, might wonder what assets the Yankees could possess which could come anywhere close to providing the Red Sox with a fair exchange. Only those who follow the game closely enough to be familiar with its rising stars will see the operation of a rational baseball mind at work here. In exchange for the Babe, the Red Sox have obtained a young first baseman who is generally considered the most promising young player of all. His name is Lou Gehrig, he is nineteen years old, and upon his broad shoulders rests the burden of one day living up to the title of “the man who was traded for Babe Ruth.” Gehrig has done nothing but impress in his first professional season, batting well over .300 for Hartford of the Eastern League—a mighty tough circuit for a player so young.

Gehrig, of course, is not the only Yankee who will be moving northeast. Talented pitcher Neal Brady, a right-handed twirler who won 32 games over the last two seasons for mediocre New York clubs, has also been fitted for cardinal hose. Indeed, Brady will provide much more immediate returns for the Red Sox than Gehrig, who will be sent to Providence.

Ray Schalk, who had been splitting time behind the plate with hard-hitting rookie Pat Collins, will also be making the trip up to Boston. Schalk is generally regarded as the game’s finest practitioner of the catching art, and paired with Johnny Bassler, will provide the Sox with first-rate backstop play day in and day out. Carrigan, who knows a good bit about catching himself, was able to cajole Schalk out of the Yankees by adding infielder Del Paddock to the deal. The emergence of young Frank Frisch made Paddock expendable.

Naturally, Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan has been asked to justify the trade of Ruth; the fact that this is Carrigan’s first year at the helm of the Red Sox ship makes the questions sharper than they perhaps should be. “I was impressed with Gehrig the first time I saw him step onto a baseball field, during a series of exhibitions we played against the Yankees on our way north. I knew that in order to obtain a player like him, we would have to offer a very talented player in return. And, to obtain an established major league pitcher like Neal Brady and a crack catcher like Ray Schalk along with him, well, we had to offer Babe Ruth and Del Paddock.” Carrigan then smiled wryly, as if he knows things about which we can only guess.

Sources close to the Red Sox say that as Ruth became a bigger and bigger star, he was becoming increasingly unhappy with Boston. “Ruth said more than once that he wanted to play on the biggest stage there is,” the source revealed. “We thought he meant the World Series at first, but when we asked him, he just said 'Not that stage. I’ve been there, kid.' ”

Indeed, the Yankees, plodding along in fifth place, are considerably farther from the World Series than the Red Sox, whom Carrigan has piloted back to the league lead. That, however, was with Babe Ruth in the lineup. The burden will fall heavier on the other Sox—O’Farrell, Speaker and Meusel, young Bassler and Frisch, Wood, Nehf, and Dauss—to keep the Boston team on top.

It is unfair to evaluate this trade until a decade or so has passed. By then, it will be known whether or not Lou Gehrig will develop into the player Babe Ruth is today, and whether or not Babe Ruth will continue to be the player Babe Ruth is today.