Babe Ruth Hits First Professional Home Run,
Fayetteville, North Carolina, March 7, 1914
by Philip Gerard
This was the summer the Orioles come to town—
minor leaguers, but plenty of pep and banter.
And this one kid—green, but knows his stuff, see?
Swaggers around, joshing with the kids,
so limber for a big man, the flannels
tight over his bulky chest and
muscled arms, cap ready to fly
right off his big tousled head.
Always grinning, whatever the score,
like maybe falling behind was just a dare
to do something about it, something
those bleacher rats would remember
and tell their own kids about someday.
Now, this ain’t Orioles Park or Ebbets Field
or even beat-down Shibe Park,
just the old Cape Fear Fairgrounds,
a sun-burned infield and some wooden stands.
He loiters at the plate, loose as a grifter,
waving a scarred little bat—skinny
as a broomstick in his thick hands.
“Look at him waggle that pole,” says one of the scribes,
“like a baby with a rattle.” And it sticks, you know?
Babe. That’s what the papers start calling him,
that day forth and forever.
He don’t look like much, till he reaches out
and slaps Mr. Spalding like swatting a fly—
and boy it is not only gone, it is gone
into the middle of next week.
Some sport measures it out—
four hundred feet and counting.
He trots around like no big deal
and the bleacher rats are cheering him on,
already dreaming of their own swat at glory
on a field that stays forever green
and always belongs to the babes.
Philip Gerard is the author of 13 books of fiction and nonfiction, including
Cape Fear Rising and The Last Battleground, as well as numerous essays and
short stories, 11 documentary scripts for public television, and an award-winning
radio drama. He has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Weekend
Edition,” CNN, CSPAN, and the History Channel, along with numerous national
podcasts. He teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington
and with his wife Jill Gerard co- edits Chautauqua, the literary journal of
Chautauqua institution in New York. In 2019 he received the North Carolina
Award for Literature, the highest civilian honor conferred by the state.