Back In Time with Ray Crone

Stopping in 1956 to make sense of '32

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“Dad, what’s a bookmaker?”

Maybe it was the formality of the word that made the question so disarming and farcical. No, I hadn’t planned to explain illegal gambling to my daughter over breakfast that day, but I also wasn’t concerned about a first-grade betting ring. Until Disney Plus aligns with an online betting company, I think we’ll be okay.

We’ve got a few more years.

Fairly certain I knew where she had discovered her new vocabulary word, I delivered a straightforward reply and asked, “Did you read that word in your Babe Ruth book?”

Reading, damn it.

My daughter, born in New York City, has embraced the Yankees as a birthright. Look, we all make mistakes as parents.

The good news is that she’s a voracious reader. Along with the usual elementary school titles, she’s also checked out books from the school library on Derek Jeter and Fernando Tatis Jr. (Luckily, the Tatis biography was published in 2021.)

At the time of her bookmaking inquiry, she was reading Babe & Me, a work of children’s fiction by Dan Gutman. My daughter liked the book so much that she checked it out twice in one month. I had read enough of it with her to know that the father of the main character had contemplated betting on games during their trip back to the 1932 World Series. (You are correct; it’s Back To The Future 2.)

The moral dilemmas of time travel were presented upon a backdrop of historical accuracy. In turn, my daughter knows — and enjoys reminding me from time to time — that Charlie Root was the Cubs pitcher who surrendered Ruth’s called shot in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series.

I must admit: I could not have come up with that bit of trivia prior to her reading the book.

Did you know that Root has the most wins in Cubs history? I didn’t until recently. 201 in all.

He leads the franchise in innings pitched, too. On September 2, 1941, he threw his final pitch in the big leagues, striking out a Reds hitter to nail down a complete-game victory.

By 1950, he was back in uniform at Wrigley, serving as the Cubs pitching coach. In 1956 and ’57, Root held the same job for the Milwaukee Braves.

Those Braves pitching staffs were anchored by Hall of Famer Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette. The team’s fourth starter for a bit was Ray Crone.

I first met Crone in 2005, by which time he had been scouting for about 35 years. We were around each other most during Spring Training.

Crone lives in Texas, and he spent much of his time at Rangers games and minor league ballparks within the state. There’s plenty of baseball in Texas.

I still remember reading the scouting report he had filed on Adrian Gonzalez prior to the Padres acquiring him. Crone must have polished his crystal ball particularly well that week. His report analyzed a 23-year-old player struggling in limited playing time and projected him as the middle-of-the-order run producer that he became.

Eager to learn anything I could about Charlie Root, I placed a phone call.

Crone, now 91, answered on the third ring.

This might be the next best thing to time travel; when Ruth called his shot, Crone had recently celebrated his first birthday.

Crone’s teammates during his five-year big-league career included Hall-of-Famers Spahn, Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie Mays. So, what were his memories of Root?

“By that time, he was kind of a rotund guy,” Crone offers. I think we can all agree that the picture below substantiates the claim.

Crone remembers some of the other pitchers “razzing” Root over Ruth’s home run. Root dismissed it, Crone says, by saying, no, Ruth hadn’t pointed to a spot over the centerfield wall. I got the impression that Root had to say, “No, he didn’t” pretty regularly.

I wondered if the coach had imparted any wisdom about the game itself.

“The thing about a pitching coach back in our day,” Crone says, “they never came up to you and said, ‘You ought to do this or that.’” He continues that the onus was on the pitcher to initiate the conversation and “that’s something I didn’t do enough.”

“We were always scared of [losing] our jobs… Whatever was working, we just kept doing.”

Crone’s time around Root was limited. During the Braves 1957 World Series season, he was traded, along with teammate Bobby Thomson, to the Giants for Red Schoendienst.

Crone believed Root’s account. Ruth hadn’t called his shot. Instead, Crone thinks that Ruth may have held up two fingers indicating that there were two strikes against him and the at-bat wasn’t over. Quite a different story than what was reported.

“Baseball writers, you know…” Crone says, his voice trailing off.

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