245: A SLICE OF BASEBALL HEAVEN WITH THE GREAT BAMBINO, THE IRON HORSE, AND FATTY McGEE McGAW.

My companions were able to sleep in on Saturday June 10, 2023 when my photographer’s alarm rang at 6:00am in our room at the Amsterdam Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. That’s right, Tom and Bob got two more hours of sleep than they did the previous day when both were awakened at four o’clock in the morning. But as soon as Tom rolled his large carcass out of bed, he reset his alarm for 8:30am. No, he didn’t hit the “snooze” button on his phone. Instead, my camera guy and Bob Moldenhauer knew they needed to be on-line by 8:45am to obtain tour tickets for Theodore Roosevelt’s home, Sagamore Hill. The last of the entry tickets for the mansion tour were slated to become available on a first-come, first-served basis that morning. If their last-ditched efforts failed at that time, the three of us wouldn’t be able to get inside Teddy’s historic home on this trip.

The three of us were in our rented black Ford Explorer at 7:30am and on the road to the city where my companions planned on beating around the Bush – Greenwich, Connecticut. It was only a seven-mile drive from our hotel to our first site, which was the childhood home of George Herbert Walker Bush. The weather was ideal on that early Saturday morning – low humidity and not a cloud in the sky. And that was great to see, because for the past several days, Tom and Bob saw reports on TV that showed New York City and Connecticut were engulfed in a toxic haze from the out-of-control Candian wildfires. Thus far on the trip, we’d been lucky to have avoided most the smoke.

When we arrived at our first site around 7:50am, Tom carried me to an area on the shoulder of Grove Lane in front of the historic home. The nine-bedroom Victorian-style structure was very difficult to see, but not because of the smoke from Canada. It was due to the dense tree-cover all along the front of the property. I was somewhat surprised by what I saw. My photographer and I knew from our 2017 visit the house stood a good distance off the road, but the numerous trees along the front of the property have grown a lot in the past six years. Even though the house and two-acres of grounds were privately owned, my two companions contemplated whether or not to walk up the driveway to get a closer look at the historic childhood home of George Bush. Since they’ve grown more cautious in recent years, and since they didn’t want to risk getting arrested or be forced to run from vicious guard dogs, the three of us remained on the public street where we viewed the home from afar. It was another case of being close, but not close enough.

Although George Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts on June 12, 1924, his parents, Prescott and Dorothy, moved their family to the home in front of me in 1925 where the future President lived for the remainder of the childhood. Bush 41 was raised in wealth and comfort and was driven to school or to other functions by the family handyman/chauffer Alec. Agnes, the Scottish nanny, or Nina, the housekeeper. During his first few years at the home, Bush was a pudgy toddler, which caused his loving father to slap him with the nickname Fatty McGee McGaw. As I looked through the narrow openings of the trees at the two-story gray home with white trim, I envisioned young Fatty McGee McGaw sitting on the living room floor as he listened to Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the radio. I laughed to myself when I thought of Dorothy asking her son to eat his broccoli at the family’s dining room table and George saying: “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.”

As the three of us returned to the vehicle after our brief encounter with the obstructed Bush home, I had a thought of a better way to see the place. My newly hatched scheme was for Tom, Bob, and I to return to the Greenwich area in late October. On Halloween evening, my photographer would apply KISS makeup to my face and my two companions would then carry me up to the house to Trick or Treat. I’d pose on the porch for some pictures or stand in the front yard where young George once played. However, if the owner didn’t celebrate the holiday, the leaves from all the trees would be gone and we’d still have an unobstructed view of the home from the street. Then, when we had finished, I would T.P. the entire yard as my “trick”.

While that mischievous scheme festered in my resin mind, I knew it was time to head for church – and that’s exactly what we did. Christ Church was located a little over a mile northwest of downtown Greenwich, in the Putnam Hill Historic District, and it took just a few minutes for us to get there. But when Tom pulled into the parking lot of the historic Episcopal church, there were no other vehicles, or people, anywhere. And that meant two things – we had the exterior of the building to ourselves, but it was likely the three of us would not be going inside the church.

Tom carried me to several vantage points near the front of the Episcopal Church, which was built in 1910. Although that parish in Greenwich was established in 1749, that wasn’t the reason my companions and I were there, or why we called it “historic”. As you know by now, Tom and Bob have said over and over a thousand times in the past: “Just because something is old, doesn’t make it historic.” This was the church where young George Herbert Walker Bush was baptized and where he attended church service throughout his childhood. Even when he returned to his hometown as an adult, Bush worshipped in Christ Church. Fatty McGee McGaw’s last visit to the church was in June 2010 when the former President attended the funeral services for his older brother, Pressy.

With no one around to ask for permission, Bob opened the front door of the church and the three of us walked into the beautiful sanctuary. Tom carried me towards the altar where I posed for a photo, then he took me off to the right side of the altar where I stood on the baptismal font. Was that the same one used when little Fatty McGee McGaw was baptized in 1925? I’d like to think so!

Just as the three of us left the historic church and returned to the parking lot, a woman who had a connection to the church arrived. After my companions engaged in a brief discussion with her about George Bush’s time in Greenwich, she mentioned the Country Day school where he attended had been completely revamped since his enrollment there. She said it was unrecognizable compared to what it looked like in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which disappointed my photographer. Seconds later, just as Tom crossed the Country Day school off his itinerary, Tom’s cell phone alarm rang – it was 8:30am.

While the three of us sat in our Explorer that was still in the church parking lot, I could easily tell both Tom and Bob were nervous as the seconds clicked down towards 8:45. A tour of Sagamore Hill hung in the balance, and both guys figured those tickets would make or break our day. I was impressed, they had a game plan in place which they had hoped would give them the best chance to obtain tickets when, and if, they became available. When the final one-minute countdown ended at precisely 8:45am, both Tom and Bob were logged into the NPS website for the tickets, however, the page hadn’t changed from earlier in the morning. Something seemed wrong as the website indicated no tour tickets were available, which gave reason for my companions to worry. For the next twenty-five minutes, they continued to refresh the page as they hoped for a different result, but nothing changed.

At 9:10am, my two companions made the decision to abandon their attempt at tickets and head to the next sites on the agenda, which were the gravesites of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Kent State University massacre victim Jeffrey Miller – each interred in three separate cemeteries that were only a few miles from one another. But just as Tom fired-up the engine of the SUV, I heard Bob shout out in excitement: “I just got in. There’s eleven tickets available for one o’clock.” I immediately shook my head in disbelief and knew our Devine guardian angel had once again worked her magic. My photographer shut the vehicle’s engine off, grabbed his phone, and quickly went to work – he knew two attempts at obtaining tickets would be better than one. After a minute or two of fumbling around the site because Tom is illiterate when it comes to modern technology, I heard him tell his friend he just purchased two tickets for the one o’clock tour. I couldn’t believe my resin ears, were getting inside Sagamore Hill!

During the 17-mile drive to Hawthorne, New York, I sensed a calmness in the vehicle. Sagamore Hill was slated to be one of the highlights of the trip and having tickets in hand was a huge relief to both of my friends. I was excited too, because in 2017, I saw only a couple of rooms inside Theodore Roosevelt’s home after Tom had obtained special permission from the NPS to photograph me inside the historic mansion. I kept my fingers crossed and hoped the photo-ban had been completely lifted in the past six years, the same as it had been at Mount Vernon, Monticello, Spiegel Grove, and the Adams’ birthplaces.

We arrived at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery at roughly 9:30am, but it took another ten minutes or so for us to locate the monument that marked the final resting place of George Herman “Babe” Ruth, the most famous and possibly the greatest player in Major League Baseball history. Even though Tom and I had visited the grave of the Great Bambino in 2020, it was still difficult to find that one particular grave. Not only did we enter the burial ground at a different gate, but over 200,000 people have been interred in that huge burial ground since it opened in 1917. Tom and Bob finally used an app on their phones which helped direct us to Ruth’s gravesite.

The first thing I noticed as my photographer carried me up a small hill towards the Sultan of Swat’s grave was the hideous bushes that once surrounded the monument were gone. And that was a nice improvement. However, the countless number of mementoes left by visitors, which included rocks, flags, bracelets, figurines, and dozens of baseballs, still cluttered the grave of The Babe and his second wife, Claire Ruth. I usually don’t have any issues with people leaving their personal tributes at gravesites, but due to the large number of items left on the weed-infested ground in front of the eight-foot-tall monument, Ruth’s grave looked disgraceful. In my mind, I wondered how much extra effort would it take for the lazy groundskeepers to move the trinkets and trim the long grass and weeds there?

Babe Ruth died from throat cancer at the age of 53 on August 16, 1948. While Ruth’s playing career ended in 1935, which was nearly 90 years ago, the myths and legends centered around the Yankees’ prolific slugging outfielder didn’t die with him. As I stood on the monument that marked the Great Bambino’s final resting place, I admired the inscription etched onto his ornate granite tombstone. The inscription, written by Cardinal Spellman, read: “May the divine spirit that animated Babe Ruth to win the crucial game of life inspire the youth of America!”

My companions and I finished paying our personal respects at the grave of Babe Ruth, then we made the short walk to the final resting place of another New York Yankees player, and manager, Billy Martin. I was surprised Tom wanted to make a return visit to Martin’s grave because I know for a fact he has zero respect for the man, especially due to his managerial escapades with the Detroit Tigers from 1971 to 1973. And the funny thing was – it wasn’t how Billy managed on the field for the Tigers. My photographer’s disdain for Martin stemmed from an incident during Spring Training in 1973 when the manager blackballed the up-and-coming Tigers star outfielder named Ike Blessitt. I won’t go into precise details of the off-the-field incident here, but it was disgusting what Tom had learned from one of Ike’s friends of what exactly Billy Martin wanted Blessitt to do in Lakeland, Florida. When Ike refused to go through with his manager’s request, Billy banished him to the Minor Leagues before trading him. In other words, Billy Martin ruined that young man’s career and his life – which was why I heard my photographer unleash his verbal tirade at Martin’s gravesite.

The sour taste my photographer and I had in our mouths at the grave of Billy Martin quickly subsided when we walked past Babe Ruth’s grave on our way back to the Explorer. During Ruth’s playing days, he was a terror on the baseball field and the greatest player of his era. In my eyes, Babe Ruth was, and still is, an American icon. Off the field, however, “The Babe” was also a terror, but not in the way most parents would want their young boys to emulate. As a matter of fact, Babe Ruth and Billy Martin had a few common traits – both liked to drink, a lot; both had frequent run-ins with Yankees management; and both had the penchant for chasing women while they were married. While Ruth’s and Martin’s epitaphs talked about inspiring America’s youth and being a proud Yankee, there was only one player who could ever be considered the ‘Pride of the Yankees’ – one player who truly inspired America’s youth with his clean-cut, wholesome image, and that was Lou Gehrig. The three of us were headed to his final resting place next.

We were in the Explorer for less than ten minutes from the time we left the Gate of Heaven Cemetery until we arrived at Kensico Cemtery, which was just a little over two miles to the south. It seemed like a slice of baseball heaven knowing The Great Bambino and The Iron Horse were buried so close together. Our joyous mood changed, however, when it took my companions over 20 minutes of riding throughout the huge cemetery in search of one grave, and that was with a map Bob had grabbed near the front entrance. But finally, at roughly 10:40am, we found the final resting place of Henry Louis Gehrig, the Iron Horse and the Pride of the Yankees.

Lou Gehrig played first base for the New York Yankees for 17 seasons and was one of the greatest baseball players in Major League history. Unlike Ruth, Gehrig was the consummate gentleman on and off the field. While Lou was the ‘Abbott’ to Ruth’s ‘Costello’, MLB has never fielded a pair of teammates as domineering as The Great Bambino and The Iron Horse in its history.

But while Ruth drank and smoked himself to an early death at the age of 53, the All-American milk-drinking Lou Gehrig suffered a more tragic fate. Midway through the 1938 season, Gehrig began to struggle physically; he was constantly tired, and his power had suddenly vanished. By early 1939, Gehrig could barely drag himself onto the field for a ballgame. Feeling he was hurting the team and was only in the lineup because of his famous consecutive games-played streak, Lou Gehrig pulled himself from the Yankees starting lineup on Tuesday May 2, 1939 at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium. It was the first time in 2,130 consecutive games The Iron Horse didn’t play in a ballgame. Gehrig’s consecutive games streak remained an MLB record until it was broken by Cal Ripken, Jr. on September 6, 1995. Roughly seven weeks after that sad and memorable day in Detroit, Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on June 19, 1939, which was Lou’s 36th birthday. After his health steadily declined over the next two years, Lou Gehrig lost his battle to the disease that would later bear his name on June 2, 1941 at the age of 37.

Following his death and funeral, Lou Gehrig’s remains were cremated, and his ashes were locked inside the monument in front of me at Kensico Cemetery. When his loving wife, Eleanor, died at the age of 80 on March 6, 1984, her ashes were interred into the monument alongside Lou’s. As I stood in silent tribute at Gehrig’s gravesite to honor one of the classiest and most talented baseball players of all time, I wanted to yell out for all the world to hear: “Today, I consider myself, the luckiest bobble head on the face of the earth.” But that wasn’t about to happen because my resin mouth was molded shut in China.

The time was nearly 11am when we finished our visit at the gravesite of Lou Gehrig and my companions contemplated on whether or not to visit a few other celebrity graves at Kensico Cemetery or just head directly to Jeffrey Miller’s final resting place at Ferncliff Cemetery, which was located about six miles to the south of us. As we reached the Explorer, Bob had a suggestion that ultimately saved our bacon when he said to my photographer: “Maybe we should check the GPS to see how long it will take to drive to Oyster Bay. I know Sagamore Hill is only about 50 miles from here and we still have two hours to get there before our tour is scheduled to start, but we need to make sure we have enough time to stop and see Jeff Miller’s grave.” A minute or two later, I heard Bob exclaim: “Oh no, this can’t be right. Siri says it will take us one hour and forty minutes to travel the 50 miles to Sagamore Hill. She says our arrival time, if we left right now, is 12:35pm. That can’t be right – Tom, check your phone and see what your Siri says.” Not only did my photographer’s GPS confirm Bob’s information was accurate, but the navigation device on the Explorer’s dashboard did as well.

My two companions began to panic as they had no time to waste. They also couldn’t understand the reason why traffic was so bad on a Saturday morning. Perhaps there was a car accident, and everything would be cleared by the time we got to the area. The only thing they had to fear, was fear itself; and not getting to Sagamore Hill by one o’clock. They knew if we were a minute or two late, the tour would start without them, and we’d be on the outside looking in.

With Tom behind the wheel, we made pretty good time getting from Valhalla to the Throgs Neck Bridge, which took us over the East River, and onto Long Island. I heard my photographer breathe a sigh of relief as we were just over the halfway point to Sagamore Hill, and we hadn’t hit horrible traffic yet. But that all changed as soon as we were over the river and into Queens, which was when the three of us realized the traffic had not subsided. As a matter of fact, the gridlock on I-295 was bumper to bumper with no end in sight.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Explorer’s warning alarm sounded, which was immediately followed by the sound of squealing tires and my photographer swearing. The camera case, with me in it, was thrown forward into the back of Tom’s driver’s seat, while the rest of the stowed gear came crashing forward as well. Had Tom collided with another vehicle? Was this the end of our trip to Sagamore Hill? And if not, would we get to Roosevelt’s home by one o’clock?

Tune in next time. Same bat time. Same bat channel. The clock was ticking!