by Jane Leavy
———. The Golden People. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
Gehrig, Eleanor, and Joseph Durso. My Luke and I. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1976.
Gershman, Michael. Diamonds: The Evolution of the Ballpark from Elysian Fields to Camden Yards. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
Goldman, Herbert S. Jolson: The Legend Comes to Life. London: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Haupert, Michael. “Babe Ruth: Better Than the Dow Jones.” Outside the Lines (Spring 2008).
———. “A Century of Success: The Founding of the Yankee Dynasty.” Outside the Lines 21, no. 1 (Spring 2015), 20–23.
———. “The Sultan of Swag: Babe Ruth as a Financial Investment.” Baseball Research Journal 44, no. 2, (Fall 2015).
Haupert, Michael, and Ken Winter. “Yankee Profits and Promise: The Purchase of Babe Ruth and the Building of Yankee Stadium.” In The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2009–2010. Edited by William Simons. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003.
Heinz, W. C. “Down Memory Lane with the Babe.” In What a Time It Was: The Best of W. C. Heinz on Sports. Edited by Jeff MacGregor. New York: Da Capo Press, 2001.
Hofstra University. The Conference, Baseball and the “Sultan of Swat.” Audio recordings, 1995.
Holtzman, Jerome, ed. No Cheering in the Press Box: Recollections—Personal & Professional—by Eighteen Veteran American Sportswriters. New York, Chicago, and San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.
Honig, Donald. Classic Baseball Photographs 1869–1947. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1994.
Hoyt, Waite. Babe Ruth as I Knew Him. New York: Dell, 1948.
Irwin, Will, and E. H. Suydam, illustrator. Highlights of Manhattan, New York and London. New York: The Century Co., 1927.
Jackson, Kevin. Constellation of Genius: 1922—Modernism Year One. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013.
Jenkinson, Bill. The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball’s Greatest Slugger. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007.
Kaufman, Gregg. Symphony of Swat. Podcast episodes 1–18. Accessed at iTunes, September 2008–January 2009.
Lamb, Chris. Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
Lee, Ivy. Publicity: Some of the Things It Is and Is Not. New York: Industries Publishing Co., 1925.
Leerhsen, Charles. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Lehane, Dennis. The Given Day. New York: William Morrow, 2009.
Leisman, Louis J. I Was with Babe Ruth at St. Mary’s: Louis J. Leisman of Aberdeen, Maryland, Tells of Childhood with the Immortal Babe Ruth. Aberdeen, MD: Self-published, 1956.
Lieb, Fred. Baseball as I Have Known It. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
Liebling, A. J. The Press. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
Lipsyte, Robert, and Peter Levine. Idols of the Game: A Sporting History of the American Century. Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing, 1995.
Lois, George. The Art of Advertising: George Lois on Mass Communication. New York: Harry Abrams, 1977.
Macfadden, Bernarr. The Walking Cure: Pep and Power from Walking—How to Cure Disease by Walking. New York: Macfadden Publications, 1924.
Macht, Norman L. Babe Ruth. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.
McCarthy, Kevin M. Babe Ruth in Florida. Vero Beach, FL: Inkslingers Press, 2012.
McChesney, Robert A. “Media Made Sport: A History of Sports Coverage in the United States.” In Media, Sports, & Society. Edited by Lawrence A. Wenner. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989.
McGivena, Leo E., et al. The News: The First Fifty Years of New York’s Picture Newspaper. New York: News Syndicate Co., Inc., 1969.
McKinney, Megan. The Magnificent Medills: America’s Royal Family of Journalism During a Century of Turbulent Splendor. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.
Meadow, Charles T. Ink into Bits: A Web of Converging Media. Lanham, MD, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1998.
Meany, Tom. Babe Ruth: The Big Moments of the Big Fellow. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1951.
Mencken, H. L. Happy Days. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.
Mencken, H. L., and S. T. Joshi, eds. Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.
Mercurio, John A. Babe Ruth’s Incredible Records and the 44 Players Who Broke Them. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1993.
Miller, Donald L. Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Miller, Ernestine. The Babe Book: Baseball’s Greatest Legend Remembered. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2000.
Montville, Leigh. The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
Mosedale, John. The Greatest of All: The 1927 New York Yankees. New York: Dial Press, 1974.
Nakagawa, Kerry Yo. Japanese American Baseball in California: A History. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014.
Nicholau, George Edison. An Ordinary Man: An Extraordinary Life, a Sole Survivor with True Grit. Sacramento, CA: I Street Press, 2013.
Niebling, Devon M., and Thomas Hyde. Baseball in Omaha. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
Nieves, David. The Fein Story Behind the Pictures: A Revealing Look at the Famous Images of Pulitzer Prize Photographer Nat Fein. West Nyack, NY: Nat Fein Collection, Inc., 2008.
Okrent, Daniel. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010.
Okrent, Daniel, and Harris Lewine, eds. The Ultimate Baseball Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Pietrusza, David. Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1998.
Pirone, Dorothy Ruth, and Chris Martens. My Dad, the Babe: Growing Up with an American Hero. Boston: Quinlan Press, 1988.
Poekel, Charles A. Babe & the Kid: The Legendary Story of Babe Ruth and Johnny Sylvester. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007.
———. “Babe Ruth vs. Baby Ruth: The Quest for a Candy Bar.” In Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2009–2010. Edited by William Simons. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010.
Powers, John, and Ron Driscoll. Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Ballpark in America. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 2012.
Price, Jack. News Pictures. New York: Round Table Press, 1937.
Ritter, Lawrence S. Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball’s Legendary Fields. New York: Viking Studio Books, 1992.
Ritter, Lawrence S., and Mark Rucker. The Babe: A Life in Pictures. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1988.
———. The Babe: The Game That Ruth Built. New York: Total Sports, 1997.
Robbins, Jhan. “The Time Babe Ruth Hit One for Me.” In The Best of Sport, 1946–1971. Edited by Al Silverman. New York: Viking Press, 1971.
Robinson, Ray, and Christopher Jennison. Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamour, and Glory. New York: Penguin Studio, 1998.
Runyon, Damon. The Best of Damon Runyon. New York: Hart Publishing Company, 1966.
Ruth, Babe. Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball. Edited by William R Cobb. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2011.
Ruth, Babe, and Bob Considine. The Babe Ruth Story. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. Reprint.
Ruth, Babe, et al. How It Feels to Be a Has-Been by Babe Ruth, and Other Essays from Baseball Greats in Their Own Words. Rye, NY: Liberty Library Ebooks, 2013.
Ruth, George Herman. Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball. 2nd edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Reprint.
Ruth, George Herman “Babe.” The Home-Run King, or How Pep Pindar Won
His Title. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2005. Reprint.
Ruth, Mrs. Babe, and Bill Slocum. The Babe and I: This Intimate Story of America’s Greatest Sports Hero—by the Woman Who Loved Him. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959.
Sandomir, Richard. The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic. New York: Hachette Books, 2017.
Sarnoff, Gary A. The First Yankees Dynasty: Babe Ruth, Miller Huggins, and the Bronx Bombers of the 1920s. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014.
Schart, John Thomas. History of Baltimore City and County, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day: Including Biographical Sketches of Their Representative Men. Baltimore, MD: Regional Publishing Company, 1971. Accessed through Google Books.
Schuck, Raymond I. “Babe’s in Tourland: How Babe Ruth Was Well-Suited for Barnstorming.” In Baseball and the Sultan of Swat: Babe Ruth at 100. Edited by Robert N. Keane. New York: AMS Press, 1995.
———. “When the Broadway Limited Stopped in Lima: An Ohio Town Embraces the Babe.” In Baseball and the Sultan of Swat: Babe Ruth at 100. Edited by Robert N. Keane. New York: AMS Press, 1995.
Shannon, Bill, and George Kalinsky. The Ballparks. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975.
Shaughnessy, Dan. The Curse of the Bambino, New York: Dutton, 1990.
Sherman, Ed. Babe Ruth’s Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2014.
Smelser, Marshall. The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography. New York: Quadrangle, 1975.
Smith, Red. “The Babe.” In Out of the Red. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950.
———. “Babe Ruth: One of a Kind.” In The Red Smith Reader. Edited by Dave Anderson. New York: Random House, 1982.
Smith, Robert. Babe Ruth’s America: A Warm and Rollicking Portrait of the Babe and His Times. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974.
Sobol, Ken. Babe Ruth & the American Dream. New York: Random House, 1974.
Sperber, Murray. Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992. Reprint.
Staples, Bill, Jr. Kenichi Zeninura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011.
Steinberg, Steve, and Lyle Spatz. The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership That Transformed the New York Yankees. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.
Sternheimer, Karen. Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Stevens, John D. Sensationalism and the New York Press. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Stevens, Julia Ruth, and Bill Gilbert. Babe Ruth: Remembering the Bambino in Stories, Photos & Memorabilia. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2008.
Sullivan, Neil J. The Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Surdam, David George, and Michael J. Haupert. The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
Susman, Warren. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003. Reprint.
Swank, Bill, and the San Diego Historical Society. Baseball in San Diego: From the Plaza to the Padres. Charleston SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005.
Tofel, Richard. Home Run Revolution: Babe Ruth in His Time, 1919–20. Amazon Digital Services, 2015.
Trachtenberg, Leo. The Wonder Team: The True Story of the Incomparable 1927 New York Yankees. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1995.
Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations. New York: Picador, 2002. Reprint.
Tygiel, Jules. Past Time: Baseball as History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Ultan, Lloyd, and Gary Hermalyn. The Bronx in the Innocent Years 1890–1925. Bronx, NY: Bronx County Historical Society, 1991.
Vancil, Mark, and Alfred Santasiere III. The Official Retrospective: Yankee Stadium. New York: Pocket Books, 2008.
Wagenheim, Kal. Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974.
Walker, James R. Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Radio. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.
Walsh, Christy. Adios to Ghosts. New York: Zinsmith, 1937.
Weintraub, Robert. The House That Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923. Little, Brown and Company, 2011.
White, E. B. Here Is New York. New York: Little Bookroom, 1999. Reprint.
Witte, Cyril M. “A History of Saint Mary’s Industrial School for Boys of the City of Baltimore, 1866–1950.” Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame, Department of Education, August 1955.
Wood, Allan. Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox. Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2000.
Woodward, Stanley. Paper Tiger: An Old Sportswriter’s Reminiscences of People, Newspapers, War, and Work. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007, Reprint.
———. Sports Page. New York: Glenwood Press Publishers, 1968.
Acknowledgments
On October 4, 1951, as Bobby Thomson circled the bases at the Polo Grounds propelled by the Shot Heard ’Round the World, Red Smith typed these words for the New York Herald Tribune: “Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”
I wasn’t thinking about how well those words described Babe Ruth when I asked Red about them. “You know, I’ve seen that quoted and reprinted thousands of times and every time, I think, gosh, that’s overwritten,” he said blushing, the way he did. “Why didn’t I just say, ‘Today reality surpassed imagination?’”
The answer is, some people—the Babe, for example—and some occasions require excess. This is one of them. You can’t overwrite thank-yous.
Now that it is done, now that the eight-year war to wrassle the Big Fella into submission has reached an end, it’s time for the shout-outs and hosannas. I’ve come to believe, having spent many evenings with the Babe, that the extraordinary generosity of the 250 or so people I dug up to interview—who knew him, or knew something new about him, or knew someone else who did—and that of the colleagues who shared their research and sometimes did mine for me, was inspired by his example. I am grateful that so many of the gracious people the Babe introduced me to have become my friends.
I knew that writing this book would be different from anything I’d ever done before, like putting together a twenty-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. And I hate jigsaw puzzles. To everyone who helped put a piece in place or contributed one, however small, and seemingly inconsequential, I am in your debt.
First among them: Ruth’s daughter Julia Ruth Stevens, her son, Tom, his wife, Anita, and son Brent; his granddaughters Donna Analovitch and Genevieve Herrlein, and Linda Ruth Tosetti. Very special thanks to the relatives I met in my neck of the woods: his grandniece Jan McNamee and cousin so-many-times removed Doris Keil-Shamieh, a fine genealogist with reportorial curiosity, Harry and Gina Pippin, and Shelby Fell Daugherty. Thank you for trusting me to tell his story.
From the Christy Walsh clan: the garrulous and generous grandson Bob Walsh and his wife, Katie, nephew Richard Walsh, step-grandchildren Kelly Merritt and Frank Merritt, and cousins Paula and Michael Messina.
From Helen Woodford Ruth’s family: Lynn Woodford, Jean Beswick, Patricia Grace, Katherine Honey, Craig Woodford, Mark Saidel, and Tim Mitchell, who helped me piece together her short, sad life; and Ryan Nicholson of the Watertown, Massachusetts, fire department, who provided documents from the night of the fire that took her life.
In Baltimore: Shawn Herne, Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, and former curator Greg Schwalenberg, who let me swing the Babe’s bat; William Greskovich of St. Agnes Hospital, and Brian Crome
r, caretaker of the former St. Mary’s property; Christina Callender, Dorothy Miceli Dupski, Mary Tormollan, descendants of Harry C. Birmingham; and Esther Hynson, Father Michael Roach, and Dottie Schluepner, former residents of west Baltimore. Members of the extended Ruth family: Jim and Tony Brady, Anna Maria and Noreen Frontera, John Munion, Jonathan Shahan. And friends of the family: Carolyn Rendon, Father Gabe Costa, and Ken and Dorothy Patterson.
Sudbury: Kevin Kennedy, master upholsterer and true believer, and Charlie Barry, who shared the secret of the piano.
Omaha: Members of the Landers family, Polly Thielmeier, Jack Landers Sr. and Jr., and Jane Landers Price, who helped bring Lady Amco back to life; also, Bob Chenoweth, Pat O’Donnell, Steve Rosenblatt, and Steve Hayes.
Sioux City: Filmmaker R. C. Raycraft, who shared the story of Ruth’s visit to the Donohues and footage of him clambering aboard the obdurate pony, Molly; Joanne Donohue Sanderson, and Dan Donohue.
Bay Area: Mark Macrae, Randy Stuart, Francesca Santoro, Tom O’Doul, Len Hockney, John Ward, Bill Jones, and all the guys at the San Francisco Old Timers’ Baseball Association who told me about Jack “Whitey” Stuart, and Jack’s daughter, Carole Tollefson, who shared her father’s story and the photograph of Whitey with the Babe in his honor.
Marysville: Steve Perry, Joanne Perry Raub, Bruce Minton, Randy Newton Sr. and Jr., Patricia Johnstone, and Carolyn Ralston-Bordeaux, who welcomed me into Tub Perry’s life.
San Jose: Richard, Joe, and Tony Cirone, who were kind even though I think I broke their hearts; Don Cordoni, for introducing me to them; Tom Randazzo and Joe Randazzo, Andrew Shepherd, and Diane Lechner.
San Diego: Debby Gumb, Toni McGowan, and Charles “Boomer” Turpinseed, who shared everything they knew about their grandfather Carl Klindt and made me feel like a member of the clan; Bill Swank, who knows everyone and everything about baseball in San Diego; Carolyn Neilsen-Major, Toni Stein, and Rolland Thomas, for making Glenn E. Thomas and Ruth’s outings with him come alive.
Fresno: Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Howard Zenimura, and Bill Staples, who educated me about and welcomed me into the world of Kenichi Zenimura and Nisei baseball.