Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend

As America's pasttime was still reeling from the Black Sox scandal of 1919, Red Sox player Babe Ruth was traded to the New York Yankees for $125,000. Who could have known that this business transaction would turn the 1920 season into a magical one and send Ruth's celebrity into the stratosphere? Babe Ruth captures that era, before Ruth joined the pantheon of sports gods.

How the Babe shook America from its doldrums with the crack of his bat

For a country exhausted by the tragedies of war and depleted by a raging flu epidemic, the timing of George Herman Ruth's arrival in New York in 1920 was perfect. Baseball had never seen anything like him on or off the field. His confident swagger, seductive charisma, and powerhouse swing at the plate was just what the country needed to forget its sorrows and kick off the jubilation of the Jazz Age.

Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend is the story of that incredible year and the transforming power of Babe Ruth and the Yankees of 1920.

When Americans wanted desperately to move on, drink gin, dance the Charleston, and enjoy a good game of baseball, the Babe gave it to them. Big time. Not only did he hit a record-breaking fifty-four home runs that season, he unleashed a new way to play the game, helped launch the Yankees dynasty, and saved baseball in the midst of the devastating "Black Sox" scandal. History was in the making.

Told in luminous prose by acclaimed baseball writer Jim Reisler, Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend is a rare glimpse into the story that started it all, a year when Ruth was simply a ballplayer, an emerging star on the very verge of becoming a mythic hero.

Jim Reisler has written articles for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek. He is the acclaimed author of three baseball books: Black Writers/Black Baseball, Babe Ruth Slept Here, and Before They Were the Bombers. He lives in Irvington, New York.

Publishers Weekly

It seems only fitting that this book about Babe Ruth's first year with the Yankees should hit shelves just as the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry will be reaching new heights. Looking back on Ruth's sale to and first season with the Yankees, Reisler (Babe Ruth Slept Here; Before They Were the Bronx Bombers) analyzes the Babe's impact on baseball, America and the roaring '20s. While the detail in covering every game of a season slows the book at times, it does capture the great media attention Ruth received in his first year in the Big Apple. The book also demonstrates how Ruth revolutionized America's pastime and how he helped save the game from the "Black Sox" scandal that turned much of the nation away from the sport. Reisler's book has morsels of revisionist baseball history (e.g., he supports arguments that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee did not sell Ruth for the money to open his play No, No, Nanette, as has often been reported). The end of the 1920 season is slightly anticlimactic since Ruth, though the main box-office draw, didn't bring the Yankees a championship that came three years later, when he had the help of a few more former Red Sox players. Given the countless books that have been written on Ruth, there is sure to be some overlap here, but Reisler's telling makes for a fresh take on some familiar topics. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Jim Reisler has written articles for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek. He is the acclaimed author of three baseball books: Black Writers/Black Baseball, Babe Ruth Slept Here, and Before They Were the Bombers. He lives in Irvington, New York.