Morning Sentinel
BABE WAS THE BEST
Fan gave up on Red Sox when they traded Ruth
By LYNN ASCRIZZI
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 10/05/2007

By LYNN ASCRIZZI

Staff Writer

Stanley Mudge of Richmond likes to look out the bedroom window of the old white house where he has lived the past six years.

"It's got my bird feeder, and I can see the baseball field," he said, of the fenced-in town ball field, glowing in the sun on an early fall afternoon.

"They keep it mowed and everything," said Mudge, 93, who, years ago, had a real love for the game.

His window was wide open, but no loud "thwack" of a bat hitting a ball resounded from the empty field. No muffled sounds of footsteps running bases. No shouts from the outfield, no hoots from the crowd.

Silence. Just occasional twitterings of birds at the feeder.

"No one plays there. Kids stay inside these days," he said.

But in the busy, athletic field that is his keen memory, Mudge replays games and scores that hearken back more than 75 years ago to the glory days of baseball. After all, he grew up in the shadow of giants like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

"I was born the same month and year Babe Ruth signed his first contract with the Red Sox, March 1914, he said.

But surprisingly Mudge isn't putting on his Red Sox cap this season, nor is he watching the divisional playoffs on TV. His allegiance now is with the rival team from New York.

"When the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, that's when I became a Yankee fan. It was Babe Ruth who was the best left-handed pitcher of his time.

"Really, I'm a Babe Ruth fan. If they kept Babe Ruth, they would have won four or five World Series," he said of the Red Sox.

He has strong opinions about Major League baseball today and the upcoming series.

"It's a lot of bunk. The real World Series is when two teams with the best records play each other -- the best team with the wins in the National League, the best team with the wins in the American League. That's the way it should be. That's the way to settle a World Series record. Now, they have wild card divisions and playoffs. A losing team can win the World Series.

"Today, everything is money. Speed and greed. That's the name of this generation."

As if to raise the very bones of the baseball hero he idolized in his youth, Mudge pitched old baseball stats in rapid-fire succession:

"Babe Ruth won 89 games and lost 42 for the Red Sox. He pitched five years, between 1914 - 1919 . . .

"In 1920, he (Ruth) hit 58 home runs. He hit 60 home runs in 154 games. Roger Maris played 162 games. He hit 58 home runs in 154 games. How the hell did he break his record? In my mind, no one ever broke Babe Ruth's record!" he said.

Mudge hit it pretty close. According to baseball-reference.com, Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920. He went 89-46 as a pitcher for Boston.

"Baseball ain't what it used to be," Mudge said.

MEETING THE 'IRON HORSE'

Of all the great baseball games he has seen over a remarkably long life, it is a 1933 game between the Red Sox and the Yankees at Fenway Park in Boston that glows white-hot in Mudge's mind.

"It is one of the greatest things that happened to me," he said.

"We had box seats in back of the Yankee dugout for $1.75. Best seats in the house. They're worth $500 today," he said.

At the time, Mudge was 19, working on the Augusta airport for the Civil Works Administration, a job that earned him $9.60 per week. He was also a private first class in the Maine National Guard.

"Around August, I drove Gen. Greenlaw of the 86th Brigade to the game at Fenway Park. He bought my ticket and everything," Mudge said.

Mudge remembers he was at the second game of a Red Sox /Yankees regular series game. "I caught it bare-handed," he said of a foul ball popped by the immortal Lou "Iron Horse" Gehrig.

"He (Gehrig) signed it for me. He had a face and a smile -- you knew he was a wonderful man. I said: 'Thank you.' I could reach out and touch him. He was having batting practice before the game and hit a foul," he said.

He hoarded the prize ball for 42 years. But then, his wife, Irene Mudge, died suddenly and unexpectedly of an embolism at age 54. He was 70.

"I was talking to her, she went upstairs, laid down on the bed and never woke up. We raised six nice children," he said.

Her traumatic death plunged him into deep shock and depression. A World War II veteran with the U.S. Air Force, he was hospitalized at Togus.

"I sold the house when I was in the hospital. We had social workers that took care of that. I told the girls to clean the house and take what they wanted. The people who bought the house wanted it empty. . .

"The (baseball) was wrapped in aluminum foil and in a box, in the back of a chest of drawers, on the lower right-hand side. I forgot the ball was there," he said.

He never saw the coveted baseball again.

"I don't know what happened to it. Too bad. Today, it's 74 years old," he said.

One of Mudge's daughters, Melissa Caron of Sidney, remembers seeing the ball.

"I was just a kid. I remember getting into the bottom drawer, and the ball was wrapped in aluminum foil," said Caron, 49, a career center consultant for the Augusta Career Center, state Department of Labor.

"I saw a signature, but as a child it didn't mean anything to me. It was my older sister, Linda (now deceased), who explained it to me. She said it was a signed ball from Lou Gehrig."

CONY ATHLETE

In 1927, when Stan Mudge was 13, he worked as a newsboy for the Kennebec Journal.

He remembers when the newspaper office, then located on Water Street, posted up-to-the-minute World Series plays on a big green board displayed in front of the building.

"It showed all the bases -- the whole field. A commentator announced all the plays."

During the early years of the Depression, Mudge was an outstanding athlete at Cony High School in Augusta, playing football, basketball, baseball and hockey. In his senior year, he was captain of the baseball team. A member of the National Honor Society, he was also an ace student.

Mudge gave the graduation speech for the class of '32. But it was a lonely triumph.

"Nobody in the family was there to see me," he said.

His mother had died when he was 3. His grandmother, who had raised him and his two brothers and sister, was too busy to attend. His dad, a stone mason, often worked out of state, he said.

"I came home after the speech, and all I got left was an empty feeling. No one cared about it. I was all alone. That was the hardest part," he said.

After graduation, he played shortstop in semi-pro baseball for many years, with teams like Pine Tree and Eastern.

"Every night after supper, there would be a game. It was wonderful," he said.

Lynn Ascrizzi -- 621-5731

lascrizzi@centralmaine.com

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