The 600 Foot Legend
Babe Ruth’s legendary Siskiyou County Visit…
Local history often survives by being told and retold, eventually teetering on the brink of folklore. In Siskiyou County, one of those enduring stories revolves around the time that Babe Ruth—the legendary “Sultan of Swat”—and fellow Yankee player Bob Meusal passed through Dunsmuir to play ball in October 1924. “When the Yankees didn’t win the World Series that year, they found themselves with extra time on their hands, so a tour was arranged through an agent with Babe Ruth to do some barnstorming across about 8,500 miles of the United States,” explains Anne Finwall, a volunteer at the Yreka branch of the Siskiyou County Library and longtime local resident. “One of the routes they planned to take was from Portland to San Francisco, and a local businessman in Dunsmuir named Frank Talmage heard about it. He owned the theater and was trying to generate income, and he saw an opportunity. So, he talked to the public relations person about bringing Babe Ruth and Bob Meusal to town.”
Meriam Library Digital Collections. California State University, Chico
As Finwall tells the story, the spectacle wasn’t cheap. “It was $1,000. The Dunsmuir Lions Club raised part of it, and Talmage covered the rest.” But, Finwall adds, when Ruth and Meusal arrived late on October 21, what was supposed to be a noteworthy welcome from the Boy Scouts fizzled. “Unfortunately, the train wasn’t actually scheduled to arrive until after 11pm, which was long after all of the Boy Scouts had to go home.”
The next day’s game on October 22, however, drew a huge crowd, and took place in the baseball stadium that still stands in Dunsmuir today. “There were approximately 900 fans. Grown-ups had to pay $1.10 to get in, and kids got in for a quarter,” Finwall explains. The game itself became legend. “It’s reported that Babe Ruth told the pitcher that he had to pitch it so Ruth could hit it and look good.” And, according to the story, Ruth indeed launched the ball out of the stadium. “There was a survey conducted, and someone said it was 604 feet and five inches. It was very specific. But even if it’s exaggerated a little, 600 feet is still a long way to go,” Finwall notes.
According to Finwall, Ruth and Meusel at one point decide to extend their time in Siskiyou County with some fishing on the Klamath River. “It was below freezing and there was snow on the ground,” Finwall says, adding that somewhere along the way, things went sideways. “There was an accident where the glass in one of the windows of the car they were in was broken, and Babe Ruth cut his hand.” That injury brought Ruth to Yreka and sparked yet another favorite local story, explains Finwall. “He went to the doctor in Yreka and somebody at the school heard about it, so Ruth agreed to do a batting exhibition for the local grade school.”
The scene of this demonstration is vivid in Finwall’s recounting. “Ruth’s fishing guide had been one of the Lawe brothers so his little brothers got to be the pitcher and the catcher. The kids all came out of the school to watch. As the legend goes, he stood in the equivalent of the parking lot of the school’s library and hit it all the way down to where the new hospital was going to be built. Is it more than 600 feet?” Finwall asks with a laugh. “I don’t know, but it’s a fun story.”
The Siskiyou County Library maintains historic collections with some written local accounts of Babe Ruth’s adventures during his time in Northern California. “We have old timers that have written down many of their recollections,” Finwall says. Some accounts appear in local history, including local doctor-turned-historian Don Meamber’s memoir. “For Mr. Meamber, it happened when he was in fifth grade, and that’s recorded in his book Sawbones in Siskiyou on page 76 and 77. There are also some stories found in the Siskiyou Pioneer 2020 issue, which is the Dunsmuir issue.”
For Finwall, the stories continue to be compelling because of Ruth’s celebrity and the local connection. “Ball is a big deal in Siskiyou County, and when the stories like this are a little more real, a little more local, it makes a difference,” Finwall reflects. In a place where history lives in memory as much as it does in its archives, a 600-foot home run, whether or not the stuff of legend, still feels close enough to touch.
