Babe Ruth three-run home run off Charlie Root in the first inning, but soon revived, and the Cubs tied the score at 4–4 in the fourth inning. When Ruth came to the plate in the top of the fifth, the Chicago crowd and players, led by pitcher Guy Bush, were screaming insults at Ruth. With the count at two balls and one strike, Ruth gestured, possibly in the direction of center field, and after the next pitch (a strike), may have pointed there with one hand. Ruth hit the fifth pitch over the center field fence; estimates were that it traveled nearly
Babe Ruth fans. In Cobb's case, the incidents were sometimes marked by violence. Ruth's biographers agreed that he benefited from the timing of his ascension to "Home Run King". The country had been hit hard by both the war and the 1918 flu pandemic and longed for something to help put these traumas behind it. Ruth also resonated in a country which felt, in the aftermath of the war, that it took second place to no one. Montville argued that Ruth was a larger-than-life figure who was capable of unprecedented athletic feats in the nation's largest city. The Babe became an icon