NY Times (edited)
RUTH DRIVES BALL OVER GRANDSTAND - Box Score
NEW YORK - Saturday - May 1, 1920. May Day disturbances of one sort and another stirred up a lot of commotion at the Polo Grounds today. Soviet uprisings among the Yankee players put the Boston Red Sox to rout, 6 to 0. Revolutionary measures aimed at the umpires, Dinneen and Nallin, wrought havoc with baseball law and order and steamed up a funny little riot. Attorney-General Palmer wasn't there to handle it, so the umpires took the matters in their own hands and three Yankee players – Carl Mays, Ernie Shore and Lefty O'Doul – were deported. Although disgraced, they left laughingly.
It was a satisfying ball game for the Yanks. They started hitting at last and poked the ball hard as it came from the hands of the southpaw, Herb Pennock. Herb survived for six innings. Harry Harper took up the burden and he was so wild that he gave way to a pitcher named Fortune. He was anything but that. After the seventh inning Manager Ed Barrow thought his name ought to be changed to Bankruptcy. Bob Shawkey pitched for the Yanks, and at last hit his stride. He held the Sox to four hits, none of them dangerous. Sixteen of the Red Sox went out on fly balls. Hooper, who reached second base in the ninth inning, was the only visiting player to pass first base. He died at second. Bob had the leather sphere spinning prettily and the Boston batsmen strained their backs lofting high flies.
The Yanks got a run in the first. Aaron Ward walked and went along on Roger Peckinpaugh's sacrifice. Wally Pipp cracked a single to right and sent Ward home. Ruth rolled to Pennock and forced Pipp at second. Third baseman Eddie Foster chucked Lewis out at first and ended the inning. Ruth did better in the fourth. He doubled against the right field wall and went to third on Lewis's out at first. Ruth then promulgated a fine piece of base running. Del Pratt hit a grounder to shortstop Everett Scott, who tossed the runner out at the first. Babe started down the third base line with the swing of Scott's arm and crossed the plate before first baseman Stuffy McInnis could get the ball to Roxy Walters at the plate.
Babe Ruth sneaked a bomb into the park without anybody knowing it and hid it in his bat. He exploded the weapon in the sixth, when he lambasted a home run high over the right field grand stand into Manhattan Field. This was Babe's first home run of the season, and it was a sockdolager. The ball flitted out of sight between the third and fourth flagstaffs on the top of the stand. Ruth smashed it over the same place when he broke the world's home run record last season. The only other citizen who has even slapped the ball over the stand was Shoeless Joe Jackson, a few seasons back.
Another dangerous explosive was pushed into the game by Duffy Lewis. He followed Ruth's example and socked a home run into the left field bleachers.
Mumblings of unrest came from the Yankee bench in the fifth inning. The soap-box orator proved to be Carl Mays. He was preaching free speech and anarchy in large chunks, hurling them all at Bill Dinneen, the umpire. Bill stands for the kind of Americanism which suspends all the house rules in relation to umpirical authority. His fellow ump, Dick Nallin, thinks the same. In fact, all umpires think alike.
Ernie Shore and Lefty O'Doul joined in this outrageous and alarming wave of free speech, directing their treasonous vaporings against Dick Nallin.
The umpires brought their heads together. Not in collision, you understand. What right had these proletariat ball players to raise a voice against the concrete wall of authority? Who were these unruly scamps to shout against the infallible word of the umpire?
Bill and Dick placed the iron heel on the necks of the common ball players, displaying no softness of feeling or kindness of heart. Mays, Shore and O'Doul were sent from the bench to the Siberia of the club house without even a hearing as provided under the Constitution.
Some 12,000 onlookers witnessed the insurrection. Were they with the forces of umpirical law and order? They were not. The were for the underdog. They whooped it up for the poor downtrodden common victims. They yelled in soprano, also, bass and baritone against the high-handed demonstration of the law of the diamond.
Curves and Bingles
When Babe Ruth socked his homer, Harry Hooper in right field didn't move. He knows Babe and he knew where the ball was going....This homer of Ruth's was the fiftieth circuit rap he has made in his major league career....Doc Woods, who looks after the sprains and scratches of the Yanks, has "Trainer" on the front of his blouse. Doesn't want to be confused with the players....Somebody dropped a handful of raisins in the Yankees' bat bag....During the excitement between the umpires and the players somebody hit umpire Bill Dinneen with a bag of peanuts....Bob Shawkey was in frequent verbal clashes with Dinneen over his decisions on balls and strikes. One time Dinneen called a bad one a strike and Shawkey thanked his umpship profusely....Harry Hooper was called out on strikes in the seventh. It doesn't happen often and Hooper was surprised....Ping Bodie warned Dinneen that if he kept throwing players out of the game the two umpires would have to play the game themselves.
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