Murderers Row- Immune To Poison, Big or Little

[DOUGHBOYS]

I am trying to find out everything I can about Murderers Row, the 1927 New York Yankees. To do this, I go back to how the writers and other living souls back then saw the game then, not from opinions of folks around now.
This will be the last time I'll post something like this here.
I've posted some previously and have gotten near the end of finding out stuff about this great team.
One book I would recommend would be, 'Murderers Row- The 1927 New York Yankees'
Apyly titled, eh?
After combing through old writers accounts of stories, I found most of them right here in that book.
Figures.

Anyways, here are a couple of stories after the Yankees have just swept the Pirates in the World Series
Anything in parenthesis is me-

It is no reflection on the courage of the Pirates to say that one factor of their World Series defeat was a decided inferiority complex.
They weren't afraid of the Yanks; They were simply abashed by them.
In the utterances of two Pirates just before the Series opened could be read their attitude.
"Gee! Said Lloyd Waner to Paul, as he gazed upon Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig for the first time (Can you imagine only hearing stories of Ruth and Gehrig and being a Big League player, still never seeing them. It truly was one of the delights of a World Series at the time)
"They're Big Guys!"
"Holy Smoke !" said Emile Yde (a pitcher for the Pirates) as he saw Ruth hammer a ball over the center field fence at Forbes Field during batting practice, "Does he do that very often?"
The Pirates had been led to believe long before they saw the Yanks that they were about to face a team that far outclassed the American League, and, in all probability would outclass them.Once they took the field against this superteam they realized that their belief was sound. They couldn't pull themselves together for even one big thrust that might have disturbed the Yankees equanimity.
Going further into the Series, there was the moment when players of both teams streamed through the narrow passage leading to the dressing rooms at the Stadium after the third game. Ruth was almost the last Yankee to appear (He usually was. Fans would surround him after each game demanding autographs or a simple touch or handshake) and he stalked through a mass of Pittsburgh players in order to catch up with his teammates.
"Well!" he shouted to a group of camped newspapermen. "One more game will wind it up!"
Unbelievable as it sounds, there wasn't even a murmur from the Pirates. One cannot imagine the Babe pulling a crack like that in front of the Giants, for instance, and getting away with it. He would have been informed by every Giant player simultaneously that on the following day the Yanks would get their brains knocked out, that they had been a lot of lucky stiffs, and that to boot, he was a ham, a bum, a clown, and a few other things unmentionable in these chaste pages. The Pirates heard him in silence, and their silence gave assent.

- Frank Graham, New York Sun

(This account gave the Waner's reaction to Ruth and Gehrig.In a New York Times story on October 4, 1927, almost 85 years to the day, a story recounts how Ruth reacted when seeing the Waner Brothers-)
"Why, they're just kids! " As he blinked in amazement. "If I was that little, I'd be afraid of getting hurt!"

(To be fair to Ruth, 'the Big poison' and 'little poison' nicknames did not describe their body types, but rather which poison the pitcher usually preferred to take.
Both of the Waner's were 5 foot 8 inches and weighed 150 pounds soaking wet.)

And one last one-

'The plain truth is that the Yankees are one of the greatest teams in the history of baseball. So hats off to Combs, Koenig, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, 'Push Em Up Wop, and all of the rest of the celebrated batting order. If the old Baltimore Orioles are still talked on after 30 years, this team will be talked of for the next century, and hats off to Huggins, the greatest lawyer who ever sat on a bench.

-New York World

(Even in his zest, this writer may have underestimated how long people would talk of the 1927 Yankees.
It is nearing a century since this team was assembled and here I am talking about it.
They were some kind of team having clinched the pennant early in September.
Even with such an early clinching, I have not found one iota about a player or pitcher being 'rested' for the World Series)

One more thing-
Opposing teams probably didn't mind playing the Yankees in the Series when it came to the pocketbook.
Back then, the winning and losing teams World Series paycheck was based on a percentage of gate receipts over the first four games of the World Series.
If the Series extended beyond four games, they basically played for free.
Their paycheck was already determined.
Some of these paychecks were more than what some players made all year.
The World Series was truly a big thing to these players in every imaginable way.

I hope you enjoyed this.
Next year, I'll find a new subject and maybe share that one with you too......