| Title | : | The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1250064317 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781250064318 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published March 8, 2016 |
| Awards | : | Casey Award (2016) |
The sale of Babe Ruth by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees in 1919 is one of the pivotal moments in baseball history, changing the fortunes of two of baseball's most storied franchises, and helping to create the legend of the greatest player the game has ever known.
More than a simple transaction, the sale resulted in a deal that created the Yankee dynasty, turned Boston into an also-ran, helped save baseball after the Black Sox scandal and led the public to fall in love with Ruth. Award-winning baseball historian Glenn Stout reveals brand-new information about Babe and the unique political situation surrounding his sale, including:
-Prohibition and the lifting of Blue Laws in New York affected Yankees owner and beer baron Jacob Ruppert
-Previously unexplored documents reveal that the mortgage of Fenway Park did not factor into the Ruth sale
- Ruth's disruptive influence on the Red Sox in 1918 and 1919, including sabermetrics showing his negative impact on the team as he went from pitcher to outfielder.
Winner of the 2017 Larry Ritter Award by the Society for American Baseball Research as best book of the Deadball Era
The Selling of the Babe is the first book to focus on the ramifications of the sale and captures the central moment of Ruth's evolution from player to icon, and will appeal to fans of The Kid and Pinstripe Empire. Babe's sale to New York and the subsequent selling of Ruth to America led baseball from the Deadball Era and sparked a new era in the game, one revolved around the long ball and one man, The Babe.
The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend Reviews
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I love baseball, I love the Red Sox, and I love Babe Ruth. Reading baseball books is one of my great pleasures, because the game so readily lends itself to literary endeavors. I'll say this in favor of The Selling of the Babe: I learned a lot about Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, particularly about his relationship with Ban Johnson, that I didn't know before.
The rest of the book? Well, there are many feats a baseball writer can hope to lay claim to, but making Babe Ruth (!) boring ought not to be one of them. This book lacks passion, humor, life, historical color, and reads like a series of fact charts. It's too bad, because the topic is so ripe for a deep mining and the characters in baseball and Frazee's Broadway ought to have leaped from the pages. -
A good read which gives an account of Ruth's early years in baseball up through the 1920 season, his first with the New York Yankees. It also dives into Harry Frazze and his ownership of the Boston Red Sox, Col. Jacob Rupert and his ownership of the New York Yankees as well as Ban Johnson and his stewardship over the American League. It's an interesting read for someone, like myself, who enjoys reading about the game and the country was at this time.
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This was a well-researched and outstanding read for a baseball fan. It provided excellent insights of the sale of the Babe by Red Sox owner Harry Frasee, correcting numerous misconceptions of other writers.
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Well researched and reasonably well-written, but the author has a habit of aquatinting ballplayers of the 'teens and 'twenties with more modern players, and of using modern slang (even some mild present day obscenities) that took me right out of the era of the story.
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Fairly straightforward tome on the creation of Babe Ruth, stripping away the years and the false mythology. There was no curse, just poor management that followed the arrival of a talent no one had experienced or knew how to control. The Babe became baseball as he remade it in his own image.
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This book puts to bed a lot of the urban legends behind the transaction that sent Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. No, it was not to finance a musical production for Red Sox owner Harry Frazee. No, Ruth was not the beloved Red Sox player as he often was selfish and slumped when upset. There were a lot of politics involving Frazee and American League president Ban Johnson. The research in this book is superb and well written for the most part. There are a few passages that require careful reading but overall this is a terrific book on the biggest transaction in baseball history.
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Wow. What a terrific read. A great book for Yankees fans, Babe Ruth fans, and yes, even Red Sox fans. Even the casual baseball fan will enjoy this.
Finally a book that shatters the old story of Frazee selling Ruth to finance a play. It's an in depth dissection of how war, industry, money, politics and power all shaped the advent of modern baseball as we know it. And it all began with Babe Ruth.
Baseball season is about to start. Give this a read. You won't be disappointed. -
being a huge baseball fan and playing it for most of my childhood, even into adulthood, I can't help but have a special place in my heart for the Babe. Before Bonds broke the record he was the homerun king and his lore was bigger than life. I think this is what made me appreciate the book the most, it brought the situation back down to Earth and made it easy to understand. Not just easy to understand, it went in depth, and really got into it. I really enjoyed this book.
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A concentrated view of three years in Babe Ruth's career; 1918, 1919, and 1920.
