The Disaster of 1925

By Mike Whiteman February 23, 2025

Throughout baseball history, the Yankee name has been synonymous with winning – and they have the hardware to back it up. The Yanks’ 41 American League pennants and 27 World Series victories is far more than any other franchise in baseball history.

That being said, all teams have had their lulls, and the occasional bad year(s) along the way. A hundred years ago, the Yanks had a real stinker.

In 1924, after three straight American League pennants and a 1923 World Series victory, the Yankees came up just short, two games behind Washington. Despite the disappointment, they didn’t feel wholesale changes were in order as these were the days of Babe Ruth’s prime – he finished the season just five RBI shy of the Triple Crown  - and the only significant offseason addition was Urban Shocker, who was coming off a disappointing 4.20 ERA. The expectations were high though for the former St. Louis Browns ace, with team owner Jacob Ruppert predicting "Shocker will pitch the best ball of his career".

The Babe of course was known for his playing as hard off the field as he did on it, and in Spring Training of 1925 it seemed to catch up to him, when he collapsed and later underwent surgery to treat an intestinal abscess. Per The Sporting News, Babe was hospitalized from “the attack of the illness that laid him low” – known now as his infamous “bellyache” and was slated to be out indefinitely.

Despite the absence of the team’s most indispensable player, Opening Day was all happiness – Shocker tossed a CG win and Ruth’s planned short term replacement, Ben Paschal, homered and drove in three runs to lead the Yanks to a 5-1 win over the defending champions. The good feelings didn't last long, as the Yankees lost their next three games and struggled to a 4-7 April record.

Despite the slow start, Miller Huggins wasn’t panicking, saying in mid-May that despite their sub-.500 record “our team isn’t hitting and our pitchers, excepting Shocker and Pennock, are not in shape. There is no cause for alarm inasmuch as the season will have a long way to go and many things can happen”. The team's performance on the field belied their skipper's optimism, as the offense was off from 1924 without Ruth and the pitching was significantly lacking as compared to recent years. The anticipated “Big Three” of Herb Pennock, Waite Hoyt, and Shocker struggled to a cumulative 14-20, 3.82 ERA through June.

The team as a whole was 15-25 when Babe finally made his season debut June 1. He had been hospitalized for over a month, and hurried back to play less than a week after discharge. He wasn’t much help, going hitless in a loss to Washington. The next day, June 2nd, turned out to be a historic game in Yankee lore – manager Miller Higgins sat the longtime first baseman Wally Pipp in favor of a 21-year old by the name of Lou Gehrig. Gehrig had three hits and wouldn’t leave the lineup until 1939. The historic duo of Gehrig and Ruth was now born.

They weren’t an instant hit though as Ruth, visibly underweight along with being slow and terribly out of shape, struggled. He didn’t hit a home run until his tenth game, and was only batting .256 at the end of June as the Yanks continued to struggle.

The addition of Gehrig wasn’t the only change in the lineup, as Huggins rotated veterans Howie Shanks and Ernie Johnson into the infield in an effort to get some more punch. It didn’t do much good, as the Yanks sunk to seventh place in the standings in July, and would stay there the rest of the season. Times were bleak, and the fans stayed away from the mess, as the team fell from their usual top of attendance rankings to the middle of the pack. In fact, final attendance was about 30% less than the usual one million-plus who took in Yankee games every year since 1920.

As the team continued to struggle through the summer rumors persisted of clubhouse problems and revolt against Huggins, along with whispers about his job security. While Ruth's on field play was slowly improving, his night life was already elite and in August years of tension between Babe and Huggins exploded, and he was suspended and fined $5000 for “general misconduct". Ruth alleged that the suspension was an effort to shift blame for the bad season to him, called Huggins an “incompetent manager”, in the press and gave an ultimatum “If Huggins is manager, I am through with the Yankees”.

The Yankee manager had the full support of Ruppert, saying “Huggins has done right and has my hearty support”. Ruth then took his case directly to the Yankee owner, who again asserted his support of his manager. Ruth came to his senses and apologized, but was still held in suspension and Huggins didn’t accept his apology for a few days until reinstatement on Labor Day.

In hindsight, the stance that Rupert took to support his Hall of Fame manager may have been one of the crucial moments in Yankee franchise history. Just think what might have happened if he gave in and took the side of his undisciplined mess (at the time) of a star player. Standing behind Huggins, and the disciplining effect it had on Ruth put the team on the path to unmatched success.

The Yankees righted the ship a bit and were 19-13 in September and October. Ruth locked in the last month of the season, slashing .346/.431/.720 over his last 29 games. On September 9th, for the first time in the season Babe was penciled in the batting batting third, and Gehrig at cleanup. The two would become a fixture in the middle of the lineup, leading them to become on of the greatest franchises in all of baseball history.

Other pieces were also being put into place. On September 8th, 21-year old shortstop Mark Koenig makes his MLB debut, having batted .309 in St. Paul of the American Association. He would go on to start the rest of the team’s games at shortstop the rest of the season, and take his regular place in the lineup in 1926. Rookie centerfielder Earle Combs took over the leadoff position in the batting order in July. He finished the season with 203 hits and a .342 batting average, the first of a number of excellent seasons in a career that would end in Cooperstown.

As the season wound down, optimism for 1926 was high. Babe Ruth was playing like Babe Ruth. Gehrig was finishing up a solid rookie campaign with a .531 slugging percentage. Koenig had made a good impression at shortstop, and the Yanks announced a slew of signings of young players, including infielder Tony Lazzeri, who was in the midst of a 60 home run season for Salt Lake City of the PCL.  Lazzeri's Hall of Fame career would start when he teamed up with Koenig in the middle of the infield in 1926.

Ruth knew 1926 had to be better, and he spent time during the winter of 1925-1926 in Artie McGovern’s gym in New York City. McGovern was the personal trainer to many of the stars of the day. This was long before gym training was commonplace in sports, but McGovern's tutelage helped Babe lose 44 pounds and take about eight inches off his waist, and get his career back on track.

Due to Ruth’s return to health the emergence of the younger players, Yanks rebounded to take the AL Pennant in 1926. They suffered a heartbreaking seven-game World Series loss to St. Louis, but the foundation was built. We all know the legend of the 1927 Yankees, and the lore of Murderer's Row. From 1926-1939, the Yanks took eight AL flags, and seven World Series titles, and became the most famous team in all of sports. Names like Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio became household names and icons of culture as well as sport. All born from the pain of 1925.