Title: Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend Author: Reisler ISBN: 0071432442 Category: Sports/Baseball Trim Size: 6 x 9 UPC: 639785385448 Price: $24.95 "The 1920 baseball season is replete with stories of debauchery, corruption, tragedy, and of course the coming of age of Babe Ruth and America''s national pastime. Jim Reisler captures it all in a well-researched and entertaining narrative. Even the most rabid baseball fan will learn something new from this book." --Brad Snyder, author of Beyond the Shadow of the Senators "I swing big, with everything I got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can." --George Herman Ruth The year 1920 was a magical one.

It was the birth of the Jazz Age, when New York was the hub of the universe and baseball was king. It was also the year big Babe Ruth became bigger than life--and changed baseball forever. In this soulful and vibrant exploration, baseball historian and critically acclaimed author Jim Reisler contemplates the remarkable impact Babe Ruth and the 1920 Yankees had on America''s national pastime and on America itself. In richly textured prose, Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend charts a year in the life of Babe Ruth, starting in the last days of 1919, when, on a frigid winter evening, Boston Red Sox owner Harry H. Frazee announced to his team''s manager, "I''m going to sell Ruth to the Yankees." It was an astounding decision. Ruth was Boston''s best player, but for $125,000 (the highest price paid for a player) he went to the struggling Yanks. On January 6, 1920, the headlines blared the news.

It was the biggest story in baseball. In Boston the "Curse of the Bambino" had begun, and in New York life would never be the same. The Yankees had pulled off the sports steal of the century. Their timing was impeccable. Among the epic tragedy of World War I, the "Black Sox" scandal, and a dearth of home runs, 1920 looked like the end of baseball. Then Babe Ruth, dressed in Yankee pinstripes, stepped up to the plate. It would become his season of seasons, with a record-breaking 54 home runs, and it was just the tonic America needed. The Yankees'' wildly original brand of baseball--bludgeoning opponents with the long ball--was something never seen before, and Ruth''s power at the plate created a level of excitement that rescued the game at its darkest hour.

Obscured by the mists of time and misrepresented in cartoonish Hollywood versions, the essence of Ruth has been lost to us. It is found here, in this story about a pivotal moment in baseball history, an era frozen in time, with young Ruth on the verge of becoming a legend and giving rise to the Yankee dynasty that endures to this day. 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. [backcover] [category] Sports/Baseball "For starters, this son of a Baltimore saloonkeeper did things on a baseball diamond that will never be matched. But getting to the true legend of Ruth requires deeper examination. Never a poster child, this pear-shaped, moon-faced man-child defied description--eating, drinking, whoring, belching, overspending, wearing silly hats and silk underwear, and generally attacking life with the gusto of someone just sprung from jail--and in 1920, he became the biggest phenomenon of the era.

Here is how it all happened." --­Jim Reisler, from the Introduction 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. This 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 Yankee dynasty, and saved baseball in the midst of the devastating White 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.