Day 85: The Big Fella

Regular readers of my work will be unsurprised to see I finished a big biography of George Herman “Babe” Ruth. I enjoy the occasional baseball book and Jane Leavy is known for her biographies of Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle as well as this one. The Big Fella is a good book with two flaws: it should be about 20 percent shorter, and, for reasons that elude me, the book occasionally tells things in non-linear order.

Here are are the important things to know about Ruth:

• Born February 1895
• Died August 1948
• Cause of death: nasopharyngeal cancer that had spread to his neck, lungs, and liver.
• His granddaughter’s opinion: “I think baseball killed him; not cancer. He had no more worth in his head” (p. 467).
• He was more than likely mixed race. Evidence is persuasive but inconclusive.
• He was raised in an orphanage in Baltimore despite the fact that his parents were alive.
• His greatest accomplishment as a player was his tremendous power and his many home runs. The sound he made when making contact with the ball was said to be thrilling.
• He had many epithets, including the Babe, the Great Bambino, and the Sultan of Swat.
• Ruth lived large, met quite a few ladies, ate too many hot dogs, and drank too much beer — the Yankees made their uniforms pinstriped to try to obscure his weight gain. He loved his cars. “He endorsed cars as quickly as he wrecked them, promoting Cadillacs in New York, Packards in Boston, and Reos in St. Louis. Elsewhere he preferred Auburns, Studebakers, Chevrolets, and Chryslers. It depended on which dealership was providing a car for his use” (p. 222).
• Ruth was financially successful largely due to the efforts of his manager Christy Walsh. “Walsh was a visionary, ahead of his time. He understood branding and product categories. This sort of thing hadn’t been done since P. T. Barnum” (p. 222).
• Ruth was one of a handful of bona fide celebrities in the 1920s, partly due to the emergence and ubiquity of radio.

QUOTD: Do you have a favorite biography or biographer?