# Read the first page of The Given Day by Dennis Lehane Read the opening of The Given Day by Dennis Lehane free, no signup. Two families, one Black and one white, caught in post-WWI Boston's upheaval. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-given-day-dennis-lehane - Genre: Crime fiction - Year: 2008 - ISBN: 9780063083745 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780061982286&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780063083745 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780063083745 ## The opening Due to travel restrictions placed on major league baseball by the War Department, the World Series of 1918 was played in September and split into two home stands. The Chicago Cubs hosted the first three games, with the final four to be held in Boston. On September 7, after the Cubs dropped game three, the two teams boarded a Michigan Central train together to embark on the twenty-seven-hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats. They'd had to pour him onto the train in the first place. After the game, he'd gone to a house a few blocks east of Wabash where a man could find a game of cards, a steady supply of liquor, and a woman or two, and if Stuffy McInnis hadn't known where to look for him, he would have missed the trip home. As it was, he puked off the rear of the caboose as the train chugged out of Central Station at a little after eight in the evening and wound its way past the stockyards. The air was woolen with smoke and the stench of butchered cattle, and Ruth was damned if he could find a star in the black sky. He took a pull from his flask and rinsed the vomit from his mouth with a gargle of rye and spit it over the iron rail and watched the spangle of Chicago’s skyline rise before him as he slid away from it. As he often did when he left a place and his body was leaden with booze, he felt fat and orphaned. He drank some more rye. At twenty-three, he was finally becoming one of the more feared hitters in the league. In a year when home runs in the American League had totaled ninety-six, Ruth had accounted for eleven. Damn near 12 percent. Even if someone took into account the three-week slump he’d suffered in June, pitchers had started to treat him with respect. Opposing hitters, too, because Ruth had pitched the Sox to thirteen wins that season. He’d also started fifty-nine games in left and thirteen at first. Couldn’t hit lefties, though. That was the knock on him. Even when every roster had been stripped to its shells by the players who’d enlisted in the war, Ruth had a weakness that opposing managers had begun to exploit. Fuck ’em. He said it to the wind and took another hit from his flask, a gift from Harry Frazee, the team owner. Ruth had left the team in July. Went to play for the Chester Shipyards team in Pennsylvania because Coach Barrow valued Ruth’s pitching arm far more than his bat, and Ruth was tired of pitching. You threw a strikeout, you got applause. You hit a home run, you got mass eruption. Problem was, the Chester Shipyards preferred his pitching, too. When Frazee threatened them with a lawsuit, Chester Shipyards shipped Ruth back. Frazee had met the train and escorted Ruth to the backseat of his Rauch & Lang Electric Opera Coupe. It was maroon with black trim and Ruth was always amazed by how you could see your reflection in the steel no matter the weather or time of day. He asked Frazee what it cost, a buggy like this, and Frazee idly fondled the gray upholstery as his driver pulled onto Atlantic Avenue. “More than you, Mr. Ruth,” he said and handed Ruth the flask. The inscription etched into the pewter read: RUTH, G. H. CHESTER, Penna. 7/1/18–7/7/18 He fingered it now and took another swig, and the greasy odor of cows’ blood mixed with the metallic smell of factory towns and warm train tracks. I am Babe Ruth, he wanted to shout off the train. And when I’m not drunk and alone at the back of a caboose, I am someone to be reckoned with. ## Books with a similar feel - [Open Season by C. J. Box](https://uncovered.ink/read/open-season-c-j-box.md) - [The Bat by Jo Nesbo](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-bat-jo-nesbo.md) - [The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-dawn-patrol-don-winslow.md) - [The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-law-of-innocence-michael-connelly.md) - [Fever Of The Bone by Val McDermid](https://uncovered.ink/read/fever-of-the-bone-val-mcdermid.md) - [The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-naming-of-the-dead-ian-rankin.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.