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Werber has stories, good ones, about many of the names now carved into stone around West Campus. Such as William Wanamaker, the dean of students: "He was constantly admonishing us to study. He told us, 'Lock your doors after dinner, and see that they stay locked, because your fraternity brothers will come in, and they will steal your time. And you're not here to have your time stolen. You're here to study.' And he was right."
He remembers when Jack Coombs, the baseball coach, asked William Preston Few, the dapper university president, to officiate an intra-squad game. "Dr. Few umpired behind the pitcher with a fedora hat on, and a cane. And he was a good umpire! When it was a strike, he'd mark it to the right, in the mound behind the pitcher, and when it was a ball, he'd mark it to the left. There was never any instance where a call was disputed."
Werber delivered on his promise as an athlete, leading Duke to an 18-2 record for the 1930 basketball season (becoming the university's first All-America selection) and subsequently batting over .400 as a senior shortstop. Baseball wasn't just the most popular professional sport in those days, it was the only viable career option for an athlete. The NFL was a backwater, and the NBA wasn't founded until 1946.
There was no baseball draft, so the sixteen major-league teams signed players by the hundreds and dispersed them to hone their skills in the minors. Both teams and players stretched the rules; Werber made a secret handshake agreement with Paul Krichell, a scout for the New York Yankees, in 1927, and went on to complete his college career.
The Yankees of 1927 were at the peak of their power. The heart of their batting order—Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel, and Tony Lazzeri—was known as Murderers' Row. That year, the team would win 110 games and lose only forty-four. Krichell arranged for the young Werber to spend a few weeks with the team over the summer, taking batting practice and observing. The experience erased any romantic notions he might have had. "I wasn't awestruck with 'em," he says. "Some of 'em were a pain in the ass to me."
Pause. "I was a pretty cocky kid. Acknowledged."
He joined the Yankees in 1930, after graduation, playing a few games as a seldom-used infielder. While the hazing rituals of the day could be brutal—Ruth once snuck up on Werber and urinated on him in the shower—the young player became a bridge partner of catcher Bill Dickey. Ruth and Gehrig were their most frequent opponents on road trips. "Ruth had a glass that he carried in his suitcase, a big tall glass, and he also carried a fifth of Seagram's. He'd pour this glass full of whiskey and put a little ice in it, a little water in it, and then he'd sip it and get jocular.
"Ruth liked to irritate Gehrig, so he'd make bad bids deliberately. Gehrig would throw the cards in the middle of the table because he knew what was going on."
Werber liked the Babe in spite of their unfortunate shower-room encounter and wasn't bothered by his political incorrectness. "Babe was loud," Werber says. "Whenever he referred to Lazzeri, who he was fond of, he'd say, 'Where's that goddamn wop?' We had a ballplayer on the club who played under the name of Jimmie Reese, but he was Jewish. His real name was Hymie Solomon. And Babe always referred to him as 'that little kike bastard,' or 'that Jew sonofabitch.' But this is the truth: These were terms of endearment." And those were different times.
Ruth did occasionally engender resentment from the women he loved and left, Werber recalls. "One day he told us an intimate story in the clubhouse at spring training in Florida. There was a light drizzle, and it was cold, and we were sitting around a stove. Lazzeri was always needling Ruth and he said, 'Tell us about that babe in Ybor City.' Well, he'd told this girl that spring training was about to start, and he was going to have to terminate their relationship. But the real reason was that he'd found someone better."
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