Review by New York Times Review
BASEBALL, the future commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote in 1977, is designed to break your heart. "The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone." The fall of 1927 threatened to be especially lonesome, ft was only Oct. 8 when the Yankees, led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, dispatched the Pirates in a World Series sweep. But the season didn't end that day, at least not for Ruth and Gehrig. The Yankee stars - Ruth fresh off his 60home-run campaign, Gehrig the league M.V.P. - embarked on a three-week barnstorming tour that would take them from Trenton to Fresno. For fans in those cities, and many in between, the heartbreak of autumn would be staved off for a few more precious days. Of course, this was baseball unsanctioned - and only grudgingly permitted - by Giamatti's imposing predecessor Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Landis took a dim view of barnstorming, and you can't entirely blame him. In each new city, Ruth and Gehrig would join opposing local teams, which were transformed for the day into the Bustin' Babes and the Larrupin' Lous. What began as exhibitions of the national pastime had a way of ending as something more like the circus. On Oct. 13, in Asbury Park, the game was called in the sixth inning - Gehrig had hit the last of the 36 available baseballs into a lake. In the ninth inning of the Oct. 26 game, in San Jose, the pitcher for the Lous politely asked Ruth where he'd like the ball, then grooved one into his wheelhouse. Ruth hit the fat pitch over the right-field fence and, according to some accounts, over a nearby cannery, too. He began his home run trot, but was thronged by young fans before he could make it to third. Of the 21 games the Babes and Lous played on the tour, 13 were broken up by overzealous spectators. "The Big Fella," Jane Leavy's new biography of Babe Ruth, is set amid this rowdy roadshow. Leavy has a taste for unconventional approaches. Her acclaimed study of Sandy Koufax was punctuated by an inning-by-inning account of the perfect game he threw in 1965; "The Last Boy" was framed around 20 pivotal days in the life of Mickey Mantle. But why accompany Ruth to the hinterlands and not stick to the Polo Grounds, or the cathedral he built in the Bronx? For one thing, some very good sportswriters have already done it the old-fashioned way. In 1974, the year Hank Aaron broke Ruth's career home run record, Robert Creamer published a biography rich in earthy detail tilled from interviews with men who'd played with him. In 2006, Leigh Montville published "The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth," a brisk, engaging account of Ruth's life, ft was a natural moment to bring back the Babe: Steroid-era sluggers may have pushed him down the lifetime leader boards, but their excesses only burnished the legend of Ruth's power hitting, fueled as it was by little more than frankfurters and a belt of bicarbonate. Leavy's conceit allows her to stake out some untrodden turf. But she also makes a compelling case that to appreciate the adulation Ruth soaked up in October 1927 is to understand his contribution to American life in full. He was not merely a hitter of towering home runs, but the progenitor of our contemporary conception of what it means to be a celebrity. "I wanted to be on the field when the stands emptied and marauding mobs waylaid him on the basepaths, tackling, besieging and occasionally holding him hostage to a new kind of love," she writes Leavy covers her biographical bases: She revisits Ruth's upbringing at a Catholic reformatory school in Baltimore, the hasty and unhappy marriage he made in Boston and his sullen retirement spent largely in exile from baseball. But it's this "new kind of love" that illuminates her portrait of Ruth. Her aim is to prove "how thoroughly modern he was, not just in the way he attacked a baseball, but also in the creation, manipulation and exploitation of his public image." The barnstorming tour provides a colorful backdrop for this side of the Babe Ruth story. Ruth, however, can only properly be called its co-author. The barnstorming trip was the handiwork of Christy Walsh, Ruth's agent avant la lettre, a kind of Scott Boras in spats. For long stretches of "The Big Fella," Walsh takes center stage. He was the impresario behind Ruth's syndicated newspaper columns, which were ghostwritten by a cohort of sportswriters (several of whom also covered Ruth for their papers - a cozy arrangement for the Babe). He negotiated many of Ruth's endorsement deals. And he closely guarded Ruth's reputation - from those members of the press not in his pocket and from Ruth himself, whose insatiable appetites for food, drink and women caused Walsh fits. Walsh had a keen eye for what we now call "synergy," and in this, at least, he had an obliging client. "There was no frame he couldn't or wouldn't fill," Leavy writes of Ruth. "No pose he wouldn't assume. No one he wouldn't pose with. Posing was the only time he stood still." In one entertaining chapter, she recounts the barnstorming stop in Omaha, home to 1927's other great record breaker: a hen who had laid an egg on 171 consecutive days. The press had christened her the Babe Ruth of egglaying. A meeting of the two Babes would provide free publicity for the remaining dates on the tour - and reinforce the image of Ruth as a wholesome man who could be trusted in the henhouse. "One a day for 171 days!" the Babe exclaimed when he met the bird. "Gosh, how 1 wish 1 could do as well!" Elsewhere, however, Leavy can strain to find meaning in the marketing materials, ft's true, and worthy of note, that Ruth's celebrity was so novel that it outstripped the capacity of American law to protect it. This allowed men like Otto Y. Schnering, the manufacturer of the Baby Ruth candy bar, to profit from Ruth's name without compensating him. (Schnering claimed, with comical disingenuousness, that his product was named for Grover Cleveland's daughter, who had died of diphtheria 15 years before the first Baby Ruth arrived in stores.) But Leavy's long detour into jurisprudential debates over publicity rights, and Ruth's failed effort to popularize his own Home Run bar, will try the patience of readers who lack a strong taste for legal or confectionary history. For a manifestly assiduous reporter and researcher, Leavy can also be careless with the facts. Describing Ruth's endorsement of Benrus wristwatches, she introduces quartz technology several decades too soon. Comparing Ruth's pitchman prowess to that of O. J. Simpson, she has Simpson the running back shilling for Avis, not Hertz. Minor errors, but they undermine the reader's confidence that Leavy has separated the man from the myth. And few ballplayers have been as mythologized as Ruth. In one well-worn tale recounted by Leavy, Ruth spends a day in a Manhattan lockup, having been caught speeding around the city in his maroon torpedo roadster. A gaggle of reporters swarm the courthouse, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Bambino behind bars. "1 see a shadow!" says one enterprising photographer, who has climbed a fire escape for a better view into Ruth's cell. "Snap the shadow!" replies a reporter on the street below. Ultimately, this is what Leavy has done in "The Big Fella" - snapped the shadow. The book captures Ruth's outsize influence on American sport and culture, and for that alone it will make a welcome companion during the long, baseball-less months to come. But the man of many poses never fully comes into focus. Ruth was not merely a hitter of towering home runs; he was also America's first modern celebrity. JOHN SWANSBURG is a senior editor at The Atlantic.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Few sports analysts explain the sabermetrics certifying Babe Ruth's baseball achievement more lucidly than Leavy. But readers will thank her for focusing on the personality colorful and complex behind the gaudy statistics. The same insight and verve that attracted readers to Leavy's portraits of Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax manifest themselves here as she traces the improbable transformation of the insecure Little George surrendered by his father to a Catholic school for incorrigibles into the imposing Sultan of Swat, master of the diamond and unparalleled national celebrity. Readers see the culmination of this transformation in Leavy's richly detailed account of the sensational October of 1927, when fresh off a phenomenal 60-home-run season and a World Series sweep Ruth joins forces with teammate Lou Gehrig on a barnstorming exhibition tour electrifying crowds from Providence to Los Angeles. Leavy recognizes in this tour Ruth's transformative assault on normal limits in sports and in life. This assault opens opportunities for Ruth's agent, Christy Walsh, to amplify the Babe's lucrative stardom, but also compels him to defuse scandals, including those generated by the slugger's unruly romantic life. Leavy, however, skillfully illuminates how the bad-boy traits of the swearing, boozing, brawling, womanizing Ruth ultimately intertwine with his explosive strengths. An American icon brought to life.--Bryce Christensen Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sportswriter Leavy (Sandy Koufax) energetically narrates Ruth's larger-than-life story in an entertaining and colorful biography. Troubled by their son's misbehavior, Ruth's parents sent the seven-year-old Ruth to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, across town from their home in Baltimore. There, Ruth developed his baseball skills thanks to Brother Matthias, who showed Ruth how to hit. Ruth joined the Baltimore Orioles in 1914, was sold to the Boston Red Sox a few years later, and a year later was traded to the Yankees. In his career Ruth had 2,873 hits, 714 home runs, and a lifetime batting average of .342, and as Leavy points out, Ruth lived as hard as he played; he "imbibed whatever life had to offer." Ruth's accomplishments and his appetites for drink and women (he had several extramarital affairs) coincided with the rise of sports journalism and marketing, and his manager, Christy Walsh, was instrumental in creating his public image. In 1927, Ruth slammed his 60th home run of the season, led the Yankees to a four-game sweep of the Washington Senators in the World Series, and embarked on a publicized three-week barnstorming tour of the country with Lou Gehrig to celebrate. Leavy's captivating biography reveals Ruth as a man who swung his bat with the same purposeful abandon that he lived his life. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Babe Ruth, born George Herman Jr. (1895-1948), is one of the most famous names in baseball. Even more than a century after his major league debut, he remains one of the most celebrated baseball players of all time. Following his 60th home run and winning the World Series in September 1927, Babe Ruth decided to do a 21-day victory lap around the country along with fellow teammate Lou Gehrig. Leavy (Sandy Koufax) offers a more personal understanding of the baseball star through this lens, brilliantly describing his barnstorming tour and cross-country adventures. Readers experience the journey alongside the players, while also learning about the impact they left on the country, both positive and negative. VERDICT Well researched and well written, this book about one the most famous baseball seasons and players in history, is truly one of a kind. All baseball fans will enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]-Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Does the world need another biography of Babe Ruth (1895-1948)? If it's this one, then the answer is an emphatic yes.The ever excellent Leavy (The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, 2010, etc.) brings her considerable depth of knowledge of sports history to her latest project. She also brings considerable empathy for a man who, though notably boorish, at least made an effort to be civilized. Ruth had reason not to be influenced by the world's niceties. After all, as Leavy writes, he was only 7 when his parents sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Orphans, Delinquent, Incorrigible, and Wayward Boys on the outskirts of Baltimore. As an adult, he was "six foot two and 215 pounds when he was in trim and made everyone else in uniform look like the boys who later played in youth leagues named for him." He was also decidedly unsubtle: He smashed and hurled and fielded balls with a giant's force, and he "taught America to think bigexpect big." Much of the narrative is a fine you-are-there reconstruction of Ruth's big moments, including the 1927 race in which he smacked 60 home runs, led a Yankees four-game sweep of the World Series, and then went off barnstorming with friend and teammate Lou Gehrig. There's tragic inevitability aplenty in that friendship, but Ruth's end in particular, a terrible death to cancer, is particularly jarring. Fans of the latter-day Yankees should wince, too, at Ruth's excoriation of the designated hitter. After another World Series sweep in 1929, Ruth "was back to offering opinions on things he knew about, expressing his disdain for a proposal to add a tenth hitter to the batting order to hit for the pitcher. He said it would take all the strategy out of the game." A skilled strategist and nearly peerless player, Ruth proves himself worthy of, yes, yet another biography, this one warts-and-all but still admiring.Sparkling, exemplary sports biography, shedding new light on a storied figure in baseball history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
