Another encounter with Babe Ruth in Billings in 1947

The boss of a Billings car dealership asked his youthful sales manager to come into the top man’s office on August 19, 1947.

Sure hope I haven’t messed something up, 19-year-old Ken Davenport might have thought to himself before his chat with Mickey Cochrane, owner of Billings’ Mercury dealership.

Davenport would have quickly learned that he was in no trouble with Cochrane, the Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame catcher, who got the dealership from Henry Ford. That was a reward for Cochrane’s success with the Tigers in the 1930s. Cochrane played a key role in the team’s winning two American League pennants and a World Series championship, as well as being named the league’s Most Valuable Player.

“What are you doing tomorrow, kid?” Cochrane asked Davenport.

Then, as Davenport recalled 67 years later in an article published in the Billings Gazette, "He asked me to to take a black Mercury convertible off the showroom floor and pick up Babe Ruth, who was staying at the Northern Hotel.

“I then chauffeured Babe over to Cobb Field, drove him around the bases, and we stopped at home plate,” Davenport said. Actually, Billings’ baseball field was still called Athletic Field in 1947; it would become Cobb Field the following year in recognition of Bob Cobb, the Billings man who became the owner of the famed Hollywood restaurant, the Brown Derby, as well as owner of the Hollywood Stars minor league team, and someone instrumental in Billings’ landing a minor league team in 1948.

Ruth visited Billings, thanks to the Ford Motor Co. sponsoring him on a tour of cities that were hosting American Legion sectional baseball tournaments in the summer of 1947. Billings qualified because it hosted Omaha, Boise, Idaho, and San Diego, for a sectional in the Magic City. It was the smallest city on the tour Ruth made the year before he died of cancer.

Davenport remembered that Ruth brought 50 autographed baseballs with him to the park where the Legion players who would play for the sectional title had gathered.

“I took the box containing the 50 baseballs and stood beside Ruth at home plate, while he handed each of the young ball players a signed baseball. My memory tells me that one of those players many years later sold his autographed ball for $104,000.”

Davenport may have been referring to a baseball that ended up in the possession of Carvel Lincoln, then a 16-year-old shortstop for Boise.

In 2008, Gazette reporter Clair Johnson reported that Lincoln, then a 77-year-old retired dentist living in the Dallas suburb of Garland, was selling his baseball. He planned to sell the baseball, which was in nearly-perfect condition, through an auction house that specialized in high-end sports memorabilia.

Bidding on Lincoln’s ball started at $10,000, and within about three hours, the ball had drawn nine bids and the price had risen to $21,000.

An auctioneer with the auction house, Memory Lane Inc. of Tustin, California, speculated that Lincoln could get between $50,000 and $100,000 for the ball.

“Would it surprise me if it goes for over six figures? Not at all,” said J.P. Cohen, the auctioneer. “The baseball looks like it was signed yesterday. That’s how phenomenal it is.”

Lincoln had keen memories of the event six decades later.

“I can still remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “It was a thrill to see him. He was sitting at the table, coughing quite a bit. He had a deep, raspy voice.”

Lincoln said Ruth signed baseballs and gave them to the coaches.

“And the coaches handed them out to us. The next day, I pitched, and he (Ruth) was up in the stands. So I wanted to give it my best. I struck out 11 batters, but we still lost. The other pitcher struck out 17. We were eliminated.”

Although Lincoln didn’t meet Ruth, he was thrilled to have met the legendary slugger.

The Boise ball player returned home with his baseball and thought, “Well, this something I want to cherish the rest of my life.”

Unlike other players who got baseballs and played with them when they got home, Lincoln realized he had a keepsake.

“I just put it in my desk drawer,” he said.

According to a May 22, 2008, article in The Charlotte Observer, Lincoln fetched $81,075, for his baseball.

Lincoln’s memory of Ruth’s appearance jives with what Davenport observed: that the Bambino “chewed signals, was in a lot of pain due to his throat cancer, and spoke with a very raspy voice.”

Almost exactly a year later, the cancer that Ruth battled took his life at age 53.