The Art of Manliness - #554： Babe Ruth and the World He Made

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the soldan of

00:00:12.140 swat the colossus of cloud the king of crash the great bam bino of course i'm talking about babe

00:00:18.220 ruth who died over 70 years ago but his legend still lives on in big league stadiums and little

00:00:22.820 league fields across america while we know a lot about ruth's baseball career little was known about

00:00:26.740 his early life and how it shaped him to become america's first superstar athlete and celebrity

00:00:30.780 my guest today sought to remedy that in her recently published biography the big fella babe ruth in the

00:00:35.140 world he created her name is jane levy she's a former sports journalist and the author of two

00:00:38.960 other biographies of baseball greats we began a conversation discussing ruth's sad difficult

00:00:42.880 childhood in a baltimore boarding school and how he learned to play baseball from the zverian brothers

00:00:46.820 who ran it we then shift to how ruth's hunger for affirmation helped him become the country's first

00:00:50.900 real celebrity and how his baseball career coincided with the burgeoning fields of public relations and

00:00:55.600 technology ushering in a new era of sports writing endorsements and entertainment we enter a

00:00:59.860 conversation discussing ruth's legacy in the world and business of professional sports after the show's

00:01:04.260 over check out our show notes at aom.is slash ruth jane joins you now via clearcast.io

00:01:09.500 jane levy welcome to the show i'm so glad to be doing this so you got a new biography out about

00:01:24.880 babe ruth it's called the big fella babe ruth and the world he created so there's a couple of

00:01:30.280 biographies about the babe out you know for the 70 years since he's died even while he was alive

00:01:35.820 people writing biographies about him why did you think the time was right for another biography about

00:01:40.120 babe ruth truthfully i didn't think the time was right for another biography of him it was the last

00:01:46.080 thing i wanted to do in part because there have been so many biographies of him as you mentioned

00:01:52.000 starting back when he was still alive i think the first one was a ghost written in 1928 and that was

00:01:59.160 an autobiography obviously but the guys who came before me and most notably bob creamer who wrote

00:02:05.300 babe in 1974 and there was a whole constellation of books published then because it was just as henry

00:02:11.380 aaron was approaching ruth's career home run record 714 they they all did in some way a really really

00:02:21.220 good job but when i sat down and read all of those books which i did before actually signing a contract

00:02:28.380 and agreeing to do this what was most notable was the omission of his entire childhood now sports

00:02:36.440 biographies have always been a kind of sub-genre you wouldn't be able to write a biography of winston

00:02:44.140 churchill or franklin delaro roosevelt and leave out the first 20 pages excuse me first 20 years of his

00:02:50.600 life but in sports you could because most sports biographies were what mickey mantle used to call

00:02:57.780 all that jack armstrong shit they were hagiography and they were often written for children and and they

00:03:07.620 were just biographies of of sports careers not of sports lives and so the guys who came before me did

00:03:17.020 an estimable job in reconstructing his career in reconstructing day by day on the field his his

00:03:26.740 exploits in every which way but they couldn't really get at the whole person and so once i established

00:03:36.400 for myself that there was a hole that i might be able to fill then i had to persuade myself that

00:03:42.900 there was a way to fill it and so i started the way most biographers do by making a list of anybody

00:03:50.260 alive that i could still talk to and of course that was another inhibition everybody that babe ruth

00:03:56.740 basically knew or was close to is presently dead but at the time that i started this which was

00:04:03.200 back in 2011 or 2012 his daughter julia ruth stevens was still alive she was a perky 95 or 96 years old

00:04:13.280 i'm not sure which and i went to visit her at her family home in new hampshire and apropos of nothing

00:04:20.220 that i can claim to have instigated in any smart way she suddenly leaned over to me and said in a very

00:04:28.600 kind of pert way you do know that george herman ruth senior in other words babe's father and katie

00:04:38.800 his mother were separated and she she actually sort of whispered it in a in a confidential way

00:04:47.360 and i looked at her my jaw dropped i looked at her i said no i did not know that and frankly nobody

00:04:54.200 knew that so i called up then one of his granddaughters a daughter of his other daughter

00:05:00.360 now deceased dorothy and i said julia said the most amazing thing and she said oh hell they weren't

00:05:06.640 separated they were divorced and you know there's the moment for a reporter you just go aha now i see it

00:05:16.240 because to come from a family that was as chaotic violent and as destructive as his was that ended up

00:05:28.020 in a divorce which was publicized at the time in the hometown papers george herman ruth senior's

00:05:34.940 divorce from katie made news in the baltimore sun and the baltimore american in may 1906 but when

00:05:42.200 babe ruth was alive and playing and being asked questions which i assume he was asked to some

00:05:48.160 extent about where he came from about his parents that wasn't something you talked about there were

00:05:54.520 no 20 minute segments on 60 minutes in which to air one's you know personal history and and and gather

00:06:02.860 sympathy for having triumphed over them so babe ruth kept it quiet he never ever ever talked about

00:06:10.840 where his family was where they came from he never answered any questions and so i hoped going into

00:06:19.840 it that if i could fill in that hole and find the boy that his family called little george i might be

00:06:27.120 able to explain the relationship between little george and the big fella that he became so that's the

00:06:34.000 big idea in your book to understand babe ruth you have to understand his childhood and it's interesting

00:06:39.440 because there's sort of because babe didn't talk i think freud would say this right right by the way

00:06:44.460 yeah but i mean like yeah babe he since he never talked about his childhood there's sort of these myths

00:06:49.560 that he was an orphan and that he didn't have any parents or his parents died but as you said that wasn't

00:06:54.300 the case no in fact what happened was this the divorce was ugly and the causes that were stated in

00:07:02.840 the baltimore sun for granting this divorce to george senior were adultery and and drunkenness so all i had

00:07:11.380 to do and this doesn't make me a great reporter makes me a lucky reporter was go into the archives of

00:07:17.900 the maryland uh maryland state archives and type in the words george herman ruth v i contributed the v

00:07:25.840 katie ruth and up popped a 150 page dossier with all the depositions police reports etc etc

00:07:34.540 revealing just again how chaotic violent and destructive this family and this disintegration

00:07:43.100 of the family was george senior according to the his testimony in the divorce found his wife

00:07:50.580 on the quote dinging room floor with one of his bartenders george ruth having managed or owned

00:07:58.580 several bars around baltimore in babe's time and um so who was going to talk about that you didn't talk

00:08:07.140 about that in 1906 or 1920 or 1927 when babe ruth hit 60 home runs and is king of the world you just

00:08:15.040 didn't say it out loud today you know everybody gets divorced right so big schmear but back then

00:08:22.320 no so the reason that he was sent away was speculated upon forever since he wouldn't ever

00:08:30.000 say what really had happened so people came to two conclusions one was that he was an incorrigible

00:08:36.840 which was a legal term used back then to describe boys who got in trouble with the law and who would

00:08:43.540 were sent by the courts to a quasi public institution in this case saint mary's industrial school for

00:08:51.620 boys which was a school that sat outside the main downtown of baltimore on the on the cusp of

00:08:58.420 baltimore city and where they accepted incorrigibles as they were legally defined they also accepted wayward

00:09:06.260 boys abandoned boys orphaned boys and boarding students so i'll often go around to

00:09:13.140 groups when i talk and say which do you think babe ruth was and everybody else raised their hand

00:09:17.940 say oh he was a bad kid he was you know he was stealing stuff on the waterfront he was getting

00:09:23.080 in trouble with the law and other people raised their hand say oh no no he was an orphan that saint

00:09:28.560 mary's was an orphanage well yes they took some orphans but they were not primarily an orphanage

00:09:33.300 in fact babe ruth was a boarding student and his father paid for him to live there and never bothered

00:09:40.600 to go visit him once by the way in the entire time that he was um living there the boys thought of

00:09:47.980 themselves as inmates there really was no place else for them to go there were not you know big fences and

00:09:55.020 guys with guns on the roof as has often been written but it was not a warm and cuddly atmosphere and

00:10:02.720 it was to babe ruth's advantage to allow people to conclude two completely opposite and erroneous

00:10:12.760 things about him rather than to tell the truth a reporter from st louis said to him in 1929

00:10:19.340 well you're an orphan right babe and he got really angry and he would pound his fist on the table and

00:10:24.680 say no i had parents but he would never go further than that well you were a really bad kid no i wasn't a

00:10:31.040 bad kid ask the brothers at saint mary's that was a varian brothers a teaching order that ran the

00:10:37.020 school but he never filled in the gaps and so the myths proliferated and became set in amber and he

00:10:46.780 couldn't escape them after a while and he didn't really have much interest in doing so so what i thought

00:10:53.620 was interesting about this book is it's not a life-to-death narrative of ruth's life rather what you do is you

00:10:59.280 take this barnstorming tour that ruth and lou gehrig did after the 1927 baseball season and use that as

00:11:06.340 a jumping off point to explore different parts of ruth's life so first talk about what this barnstorming

00:11:12.280 because i didn't know that this happened back in the 20s in professional baseball what that is and then

00:11:17.560 why do you use use this as the narrative framework for ruth's life sure barnstorming which is of course

00:11:24.260 an aviator's term it's what you know i used to call it when aviators in the early years like

00:11:29.700 lindberg would fly in and out of cities in small planes delivering mail and things barnstorming was a

00:11:36.520 long time tradition for ballplayers who of course didn't make a lot of money back in the day to make

00:11:43.960 extra money during the off season and they would organize teams sometimes around a couple of stars there

00:11:50.360 was a for a while or babe ruth all-star team but even bob feller and you know had a had a traveling

00:11:56.900 barnstorming team in the 40s so it was a tradition and what i wanted to do was get babe ruth out of the

00:12:06.040 city i wanted to be able to give a portrait of him at the apex of his career so this tour in 1927

00:12:14.900 organized by his agent christy walsh was almost a victory lap of the country it starts just 10 days

00:12:24.100 after he's hit his 60th home run and they go caravanning from town to town to town and playing

00:12:31.060 essentially not quite pickup games but they play baseball games against some sometimes a minor league

00:12:37.280 team or a semi-pro team remember there was a lot of baseball talent in america and people played in

00:12:42.880 organized leagues and they would collect money wherever they went and christy walsh who was very

00:12:49.020 very savvy made sure to get the money up front and when they didn't get the money up front one time in

00:12:54.160 asbury park babe and garrig sat in their underwear in a hotel suite at uh at a hotel waiting for somebody

00:13:01.940 to come up with the cash so what but it did was it be it was able what this did was allow me to show

00:13:10.460 babe ruth at the absolute apex of his fame and to show what it was like to be him and to be around

00:13:18.180 him and that you didn't really get in the new york papers because new york writers basically didn't

00:13:25.380 write what he said they often made it up or they just didn't quote him at all but the local reporters

00:13:31.060 for whom this was a once in a lifetime event that babe ruth was coming to their town wrote down

00:13:36.960 every detail of what they said what they did who they got an award from what the woman was wearing

00:13:43.540 who got who gave them the award you name it so there was a a gold mine of of information that could

00:13:50.640 give you a flavor of what it was like to be him because to be babe ruth in 1927 was to be the first

00:14:00.100 really great modern celebrity and i would i would say and i think i did say he was the most famous

00:14:08.240 man in america who wanted that fame lindberg obviously who had crossed the atlantic in his in the spirit

00:14:15.920 of st louis that year he was as famous certainly but he didn't really want to be he liked being up in

00:14:22.920 the sky away from the pressing the flesh babe ruth the little boy who was sent away to an institution

00:14:30.560 at age seven where he learned how to be public he lived in dorms with boys who slept head to toe

00:14:38.640 and rose beds that were separated by just a bent wood chair he was never alone as a kid so what he

00:14:46.840 learned as a little boy and this was the revelation for me what he learned was how to be public and he

00:14:53.740 learned to be comfortable surrounded by a mass of male energy and so with the pictures you see of him

00:15:01.840 and one especially taken in syracuse in 1925 during a yankee uh off day they played an exhibition game

00:15:09.120 there where 5 000 boys try to cram themselves into a single frame with the babe and they're draped

00:15:16.640 over him like a cheap fur boa and they can't get enough of him and more to the point he can't get

00:15:23.500 enough of them babe wanted to be famous but did he start playing baseball so he could be famous and be

00:15:30.040 a celebrity or did did he he he have a talent for baseball that people recognize and he became a

00:15:35.680 celebrity and then he's like that feels good and just did more to foster that baseball was an organizing

00:15:42.240 principal at saint mary's they had a chronically overcrowded place and the way they could channel

00:15:49.900 all that energy was to organize leagues and teams and so whenever they weren't in the classroom and

00:15:57.040 they weren't in the classroom all day the way you know kids are today or in or would have been in

00:16:03.940 regular schools they sent him outside morning noon and night you know spring summer fall and winter

00:16:10.120 to play baseball so he had it was almost like a farm system for growing baseball talent and he stood

00:16:17.940 out from the beginning partly because he was bigger than everybody else later in his uh time at saint

00:16:24.980 mary's people would assume that he was a staff member because he was so much bigger than everybody else

00:16:29.300 there was a system of athletics there and people who really knew the game and had to teach it

00:16:36.640 the one who is most often credited with um having turned him into the ball player he is was a guy

00:16:42.920 named brother matthias who was a kind of a mythical giant depending on who you believed he was 6'4 or 6'6

00:16:50.000 and 225 or 250 and he certainly was there and he certainly had a lot to do with the bay but he wasn't

00:16:56.000 the only one there were a couple other brothers who knew their stuff out on the ball field and he was

00:17:02.340 given an opportunity to shine and this was a kid who needed to shine and who wanted the attention

00:17:10.120 that clearly he wasn't getting in any other way at saint mary's you got visitors on a sunday once a

00:17:17.780 month and you know one of the few remaining accounts of his life there a friend of his wrote that another

00:17:26.260 sunday came and went and babe had no visitors and he said i guess i'm just too big and ugly to visit

00:17:33.740 so this was a kid who needed and wanted attention and the and what better way to get it than by throwing a

00:17:42.160 ball further and harder than anybody else could because of course first he was a pitcher as we all

00:17:48.360 know so he didn't set out to be famous that kind of fame didn't exist in certainly in sports remember

00:17:55.060 when he was a rookie with the boston red sox in 1914 having been mustered out of saint mary's by

00:18:02.520 jack dunn owner of the minor league of baltimore orioles and then sold just six months later to

00:18:09.560 the red sox fame was a local thing it was the circumference of the distribution of a local

00:18:16.580 newspaper where as far as a newspaper boy could hurl hurl you know the morning paper there was no radio

00:18:23.420 so what you learned about famous acts and things after the fact so one of the fascinating things

00:18:30.980 about babe's life is to look at it in terms of how much the country changed and felicitously for him

00:18:39.060 it changed so profoundly in a kind of revolutionary moment in the 20s just as he was assuming the you

00:18:47.280 know full height of his powers and there were people in babe's life that were facilitating this change

00:18:52.300 in modern america and you mentioned one of them christy walsh who is sort of his manager like this

00:18:58.240 is the thing like you said like babe ruth created a whole new world that didn't exist before him and

00:19:02.960 something that didn't exist really at that time before him were a sports manager or an agent or a

00:19:08.280 pr person christy walsh was kind of like all this and wrapped up into one so tell us about him and his

00:19:14.360 influence in ruth's life as but as well as shaping what sports is today or what celebrity is today

00:19:20.180 so christy walsh was a failed sports writer failed sports cartoonist failed uh car uh account manager

00:19:31.080 at an advertising place when in the in february 1921 he decided that the only way he was going to

00:19:38.920 get himself out of his latest jam being fired by an advertising company in new york was to hook up

00:19:46.080 with babe ruth now of course everybody wanted to hook up with babe ruth he had been he'd been sold

00:19:50.920 to the yankees night at december 26 1919 he had played his first season in new york to great you

00:19:58.120 know acclaim and an unprecedented show of power and now everybody wants a part of him and christy who's

00:20:04.240 christy walsh how's he gonna how's he gonna get you know in front of babe ruth to position himself to

00:20:10.680 represent him well finally uh and his nephew christy's nephew told me this in desperation

00:20:16.520 he found out where babe was staying in a hotel climbed up the outside fire escape that you know

00:20:23.980 you have those clinging to buildings in new york city opened the window to his room a crack saw babe

00:20:30.060 ruth in bed with a blonde climbed through the window slapped him on the butt and said i want to represent

00:20:35.500 you and what what he wanted to represent him in was selling ghost written stories under his name now

00:20:43.680 again there is no radio how are people going to hear what their heroes have to say about the games and

00:20:50.860 the world series and their triumphs and their you know despair they're going to read columns that are

00:20:57.180 published and syndicated and published across the country in these little 600 800 word articles that

00:21:04.600 are purportedly written by their heroes well in fact their heroes never wrote them babe ruth never

00:21:10.840 wrote his columns christy walsh would find a ghost writer initially himself and then later important

00:21:16.920 new york sports writers to put words in babe ruth's mouth but he did it successfully and he created a

00:21:23.160 system that was so successful that ultimately he had ruth and gehrig and john mcgraw the manager of the

00:21:29.920 giant new york giants and miller huggins the manager of the yankees and

00:21:33.760 on and on and on he cornered the market in that kind of talent and people kind of knew that this

00:21:41.200 was not really necessarily what they exactly said but it still gave the illusion that the athletes were

00:21:49.380 talking directly to them and walsh was so successful at this and babe you know comes to new york just as

00:21:58.240 the field of marketing and public relations is taking shape and madison avenue is being born

00:22:05.840 under the tutelage of edward bernays and ivy lee and people are learning how to sell things commodities

00:22:13.880 personalities politicians to people who didn't necessarily know they wanted them or like them or

00:22:20.300 needed them and walsh applied all the techniques that those guys were using to sell soap or whatever

00:22:28.280 else there was to the to to selling babe ruth and so he got him endorsements that you know were

00:22:34.940 in that were unprecedented in their value other people had endorsed chewing gum or tobacco or whatever

00:22:43.100 but this was systematic and so much bigger so that in 1927 for example babe ruth becomes the first

00:22:51.700 athlete to earn more from his accumulated um activities off the field than he earned from the

00:23:00.100 yankees for playing for hitting 60 home runs and playing the outfield so he earned uh 73 from the

00:23:07.060 yankees and almost a thousand dollars more for that than that for vaudeville for his ghost written

00:23:13.540 columns for endorsements um this was a revolutionary um development and what christy walsh understood

00:23:22.280 i think before anybody else was that athletes could be merchandised and marketed as entertainers he

00:23:30.800 understood that athletes should be paid not just for the home runs they had hit out of ballparks

00:23:36.760 as in ruth's case but for the people they brought into ballparks so it's a whole revolutionary and

00:23:45.920 different way of looking at the worth of an athlete and that was a radical uh departure and a and a and

00:23:53.960 you know walsh is really the original jerry mcguire frankly so walsh not only played a part in this

00:24:00.400 crafting this image of ruth that helped him become like a living legend but you also talk about how

00:24:06.360 sports writers other sports writers contributed to this this is a fascinating history of america as

00:24:11.100 well because before ruth some newspapers had sports sections um very few had you know dedicated sports

00:24:17.600 departments but now that's something we take for granted of course the newspaper is going to have

00:24:21.860 a sports section of course it's going to have a sports department how did sports writing or how

00:24:26.800 did babe ruth or what was the relationship between babe ruth and sports writers that i mean do they feed

00:24:31.560 off of each other so what one sports writer um and i frankly couldn't find out who it was

00:24:36.500 if somebody knows please let me know said of ruth he was a sunday buffet every day of the week

00:24:43.220 he you know he was the greatest story to write about that sports writers had ever had and unlike other

00:24:51.280 sports you know and basketball certainly wasn't a big deal then the nfl was just being formed then

00:24:57.340 baseball was daily and 24 7 coverage was really invented to keep track of babe ruth and it was

00:25:06.020 invented by the new york daily news which was america's first tabloid went to print in june 1919

00:25:13.400 six months before harry fraise owner of the red sox stupidly and legendarily sold babe ruth to the

00:25:22.240 yankees and suddenly people are recognizing the importance of image over word well you know think

00:25:29.920 of the images of babe ruth and that rubbery mobile face of his and that swing you know that uppercut

00:25:36.540 swing is with its chin lifted as he looks towards the right field stands as he's following the flight

00:25:42.800 of yet another incredible you know home run so babe ruth demanded coverage and with marshall hunt the guy

00:25:50.040 who covered him for the daily news for so many years and who was the pioneer of the 24 7 coverage

00:25:56.540 basically said you know he was he took up two-thirds of every afternoon newspaper in new york and this is

00:26:03.180 you know this is known the 20s are known as the golden age of sports but what they really were

00:26:08.100 was a golden age of sports writing and of newspapering there were i think 15 daily newspapers in new york city

00:26:15.240 in the 20s and this is how people got their got the information radio was not yet in those early days

00:26:22.960 you know available to give you the scores and the updates people gathered at street corners to wait

00:26:29.200 for the afternoon paper to come in because of course remember people were playing afternoon games

00:26:33.220 but the revolution that was going on in mass media including tabloid news was was as earth-shaking

00:26:42.580 and as profound as the the advent of personal computing in in our lifetime so imagine suddenly

00:26:50.720 there's a first major league game is covered on radio from pittsburgh in the august 1921 now it's

00:26:58.480 still so revolutionary and new that that fall when the yankees play a pivotal series against the

00:27:05.620 cleveland indians that's going to decide the pennant people on the east side of new york

00:27:11.220 employ a guy with a pigeon to go to the polo grounds yankee stadium didn't exist yet and have the pigeon

00:27:18.860 fly back and forth from the ballpark to their neighborhood with updates every inning that's how

00:27:25.580 paltry information was and of course by 1927 things had changed so radically that the world series

00:27:34.080 was covered coast to coast not by one but by two brand new radio networks nbc and cbs so babe ruth came

00:27:43.700 along just at the right moment to be publicized and aggrandized and the one thing they didn't do

00:27:52.220 was write about his private life there was uh you know an on the field and an off the field

00:27:57.820 and nobody wanted to tread on babe ruth's indiscretions everybody knew about them nobody

00:28:04.780 wrote about them walsh was very good about keeping stuff out of the press and but even that you know

00:28:11.400 even that precedent was set in 1925 when suddenly he was he was suspended on august 30th 1925 for he'd been

00:28:23.140 late he'd been out drinking he'd what people didn't know was that his first marriage had fallen apart

00:28:27.880 and miller huggins finally is fed up and finds and suspends him and it becomes this huge story front page

00:28:35.280 news everywhere and the owner and founder of the daily news joseph patterson decides enough is enough

00:28:41.800 we're done protecting him we're going to treat babe ruth as news not as a sports icon and they plaster the

00:28:48.680 picture of his mistress who would become his second wife on the front page of the daily news and she

00:28:54.240 where she would remain for three days and the story was a huge huge thing all across the country

00:29:00.620 so as i said it's a revolutionary moment for both and and they took advantage of it in terms of

00:29:08.040 promoting him and having him be paid for it and they also suffered in the ways that modern athletes do

00:29:14.840 being penalized by how much could now be known about them i like the distinction you make between

00:29:21.340 the two types of journalists there's the journalists who you know went out of the way to protect ruth's

00:29:25.400 image they didn't say anything about his negative stuff you you called them the g-wiz journalists and

00:29:30.580 then the the journalists who knew that you know he had some shady stuff going on in his private life

00:29:34.960 weren't upset and they finally you know disclosed it those are the odd nuts yes journalists i can't take

00:29:41.520 credit for those uh terms they've been around in sports writing forever i think it might have been

00:29:46.580 stanley woodward of the famous sports editor of the new york tribune herald tribune who who coined them

00:29:53.220 but yeah i mean people were writing parables grantlin rice was the most famous of them nationally

00:29:59.480 syndicated columnist who wrote the whole thing about the four horsemen of the apocalypse he wrote he

00:30:05.040 literally would write little poems at the beginning of sports columns and they thought of themselves as

00:30:09.640 writing great dramas they didn't go down to locker rooms and ask questions they didn't peer into

00:30:15.700 locker rooms and see into lockers um and see you know a thing of steroid cream in the top shelf and report

00:30:24.080 on it they thought of themselves as writing about you know great dramas of good and evil and triumph and

00:30:31.100 failure and uh that predominated and and i would say it predominated probably all the way through to

00:30:37.780 1957 when the new york yankees and mickey mantle et al were involved in a fracas it was called at the

00:30:46.100 copacabana so sports writings always had the rap on it that it was you know you're writing for the

00:30:52.860 in the playpen but it has evolved and it has um grown up and you know some readers assail it because they

00:31:01.120 they want to read the sports page for enjoyment not for you know tales of steroids and money and

00:31:08.320 you know wife beating and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah but it all started to come apart

00:31:15.240 you know in 1925 with joe patterson and babe ruth yeah and so those gee whiz journalists like they they

00:31:22.740 helped create the legend they were they were part of creating the legend of ruth that's still with us

00:31:26.960 today well for example you know the 1927 barnstorming tour walsh invited a guy along a reporter and

00:31:35.100 magazine writer for colliers who went along with them on parts of their train tour of of the of the

00:31:42.560 country and you know he fed him all this stuff about babe is the wise elder teaching lou gehrig the

00:31:50.300 ropes of how to be a public person and quoted him you know at length and seriously giving

00:31:56.620 gehrig lessons in how to behave which is in retrospect of course laughable if there were any

00:32:03.180 indiscretions committed on that tour neither john b kennedy nor christy walsh were talking about him

00:32:09.260 but gehrig's quoted as saying oh yeah it was a real education traveling around with the with the babe

00:32:14.740 we sure would have been arrested a number of times if it hadn't been for him well probably if it hadn't

00:32:20.620 been for him they wouldn't have had uh committed whatever offense it was that might have gotten

00:32:25.400 them arrested but it was to was to ruth's benefit and to christy walsh's benefit to promote ruth as this

00:32:33.580 is just two years after the the the horror show of the revelation of you know the discord in his marriage

00:32:41.640 nobody actually wrote what they may have known which was that they were already um had already

00:32:47.120 signed a separation agreement but it was two years later he's trying to promote ruth as this wise elder

00:32:52.940 this guy who's mature a mature man of the world who's you know figured out how to how to behave and in

00:32:59.540 some ways that's actually it was actually true because having hit the bottom in 25 with this you know

00:33:07.480 scandal about his marriage and earlier that season the stomach ache heard around the world when he

00:33:13.340 passed out and almost died on route back to new york after spring training you know christy walsh

00:33:21.120 really did whip him into shape it may he made it very clear to him that you know he had to cut back on

00:33:27.000 the gambling he had to cut back on the eating he had to cut back on you know he would had to learn to

00:33:33.160 keep his indiscretions private as paul gallico wrote about ruth later and he had learned he learned that

00:33:39.880 lesson well he wasn't completely reformed ever charmingly and never completely reformed but he

00:33:46.960 was more careful about it yeah so his private life he lived life in excess he ate a lot he drank a lot

00:33:53.420 womanized he did gambled i mean he did everything to the full hilt you know it's funny people talk about

00:33:59.960 how many hot dogs he ate because of course so that was the legend was that he ate so many hot dogs

00:34:04.220 that's how he got that stomach ache heard around the world which of course was preposterous but

00:34:08.580 at saint mary's those boys were fed meat once a once a week and guess what that meat was hot dogs

00:34:15.780 is it any surprise that babe ruth would spend his adult life trying to fill up the holes and the

00:34:22.380 emptiness of his childhood literally with hot dogs but then also with the in excess of of everything

00:34:30.300 having had so little you know women beer you know gambling and he got himself into real debt so that by

00:34:40.140 25 when he signed this separation agreement from his first wife which called for him to pay her a hundred

00:34:47.760 grand over for installments over four years he didn't have the money and the way christy walsh

00:34:54.840 maneuvered to get complete control over him and thus you know saved his butt financially and put his house

00:35:03.720 in order was by saying you know yeah he would lend him the money that he needed to pay his taxes

00:35:09.500 but babe ruth had to give him permission to to be in charge of all his money from then on and ruth

00:35:16.660 signs this letter in in 1926 which i found in a collection of christy walsh archives and uh at

00:35:25.200 that point christy walsh is no longer just the syndicator of his of his ghost written columns he

00:35:33.120 becomes his money manager and his conscience and his guide and you know where ruth would have been

00:35:40.020 without him is hard to describe so you mentioned you know his first marriage ends because of his

00:35:46.540 indiscretions but like what was he like as a family man i mean besides the indiscretions like

00:35:50.640 would you know he came from a broken home did he intentionally think i'm going to be a better dad

00:35:56.340 to my kids than my dad was to me or did he kind of end up just repeating this the patterns he saw that

00:36:02.180 his dad uh sat down one of the myths again about babe ruth is that as soon as he got out of

00:36:09.420 saint mary's he ran amok you know filling up all those holes in his resume with you know spending too

00:36:18.180 much money eating too much drinking too much that's not true what he did when he got out of saint mary's

00:36:25.980 was try to create for himself stability and the family he never had so he married helen woodford

00:36:35.140 a waitress that he had met in boston at a coffee shop in october of that year that's a hell of a

00:36:41.660 year 1914 for babe ruth he gets out of saint mary's where he's lived basically in captivity since he was

00:36:48.860 seven he's go he signs with the orioles he makes his major league debut with the red socks he helps

00:36:55.860 he's sent down to the minor leagues and helps the providence grays win a championship and then he

00:37:01.300 gets married that's not the act of a of a wild man that's the act of a guy who's trying to comport

00:37:09.480 with societal norms he's trying to do the right thing and that that it didn't work that a marriage

00:37:17.240 between a 19 year old and a 16 year old who knew nothing of the world and he knew nothing of what the

00:37:23.040 world was about to offer him that it wouldn't survive is hardly surprising he was not a particularly

00:37:30.140 great father particularly to his first daughter um dorothy who was the who was who died never knowing

00:37:40.220 for sure who her birth parents were he did that he wouldn't know how to be that kind of parent is

00:37:46.700 again not surprising to me he tried however he really did try i i think he was a decent guy trying

00:37:55.400 to do the best that he could it seems like with the daughter of his second wife claire whom he adopted

00:38:00.900 they had a better relationship and that was the one you talked to julia right sure yes julia who died

00:38:07.480 um at age 102 last winter was absolutely devoted to him and saw him and the world through rose colored

00:38:17.500 glasses but who blames her here's a guy you know she her her birth father had disappeared from her life

00:38:24.600 i don't i don't even know if she knew what i found out which was that claire had divorced him claire

00:38:31.440 grew up in georgia and really was a southern kind of gal she had divorced him because he had beaten

00:38:36.580 her so along comes babe ruth and he gives her his name and he gives her a life she could never

00:38:43.820 otherwise have had that her devotion to him is completely understandable so i mean babe ruth became

00:38:51.920 a living legend like while he was alive like i can say probably one of the first you know sports living

00:38:56.940 legends but then the really sad part i started feeling really sad was when he found out he had cancer

00:39:03.120 basically and he started just withering away how did ruth handle that like and i mean because that's

00:39:11.020 a big drop you're going from like you're the prime of your life when you hit 60 home runs and just a few

00:39:16.800 years later you realize you're on the you know you might be dying here soon how did ruth handle that

00:39:22.880 well i think he handled it gracefully extremely gracefully but you know the the tragedy if that's the

00:39:30.720 right word of his life after baseball began after he quit 1935 midway through a very very ill conceived

00:39:41.300 arrangement with the boston braves the yankees had been done with him at the end of 34 and he wasn't

00:39:48.360 ready to quit he wanted to manage he accepted a contract from emile fuchs to return to boston allegedly to

00:39:56.160 bring the boston braves back to success in fact he was just really there to you know bring in people

00:40:02.220 because they were they didn't have a prayer succeeding and it was clear by the end of may

00:40:07.520 35 that there was nothing left for him to to do on the field couldn't run couldn't you know catch a ball

00:40:14.280 in the last game he played ret rolled past him in the outfield and humiliated him but from then on

00:40:21.020 baseball had no use for him absolutely none there was no job there was he sat by the phone claire said

00:40:27.000 and waited for waiting for it to ring and it never did and would cry because he had made baseball into

00:40:34.980 the instant and the institution and the crowds and all those boys who would pile out of rickety

00:40:40.900 ballparks to surround him he'd made them the family he didn't have as a boy and suddenly it was gone

00:40:48.760 and the repudiation by an abandonment by this second family was a recapitulation of the abandonment of

00:40:59.060 him as a young child and i think that was excruciating for him he had one very brief fling as a coach

00:41:06.620 for the dodgers again he thought maybe they would hire him as a manager this is at the end of the 30s

00:41:13.080 no go and there was really nothing for him to do he threw himself into raising money for war bonds

00:41:19.680 in the early 40s and in 1944 the new yorker sent a reporter for talk of the town to ask him how he

00:41:28.620 felt about japanese soldiers going to their death charging into line of fire screaming to hell with

00:41:35.680 babe ruth in japan he was still a very big deal and he said well sounds like those little itty bitty ones

00:41:44.980 and which i think was hilarious but the reporter noticed that his throat sounded very hoarse

00:41:51.960 and i can't help but wonder whether that wasn't the beginning of the nasal pharyngeal cancer that would

00:41:59.000 take his life he died on august 16th 1948 after returning back from a yet another road trip what

00:42:08.400 babe ruth knew to do was to travel was to go out he went on another barnstorming tour ford motor company

00:42:15.320 was paying him five hundred dollars to go for each city he visited to promote baseball for boys in the

00:42:21.060 ford leagues and he went to st louis where he was photographed on the field before browns game

00:42:28.020 and posed with yogi berra who later told me he was so nervous he didn't know what to do

00:42:32.680 joe dimaggio gave him a trophy billy dewitt the son of the owner who's now the owner of the cardinals

00:42:39.240 you know went down in a uniform and was supposed to be taught how to hit by the babe he was

00:42:44.600 the designated child in the alleged clinic that babe ruth was way too weak to give and by the way

00:42:51.680 billy dewitt's uniform was later used by eddie goodell the the midget who was i know you're not

00:42:56.620 supposed to say midget but back in the day the midget who was sent up to hit by bill veck famously

00:43:01.520 when he inherited the browns from dewitt's father and he went to minneapolis where he was interviewed

00:43:08.420 and it was his last his last interview it was a radio interview conducted by an 11 year old child

00:43:14.480 named johnny ross johnny was blind babe ruth could barely talk the cancer that had begun to grow in the

00:43:22.400 nasal passages at the back of his nose which surgeons had been unable to remove had grown and

00:43:29.760 encircled his carotid artery they had to tie you know tie it off he actually was guinea pig for a very

00:43:37.780 early kind of chemotherapy that would prove to be in later iterations very successful and still used to

00:43:45.620 some to some extent today in suppressing certain kinds of cancers but by by august 1948 it you know

00:43:53.520 the handwriting was on the wall and it was an extraordinary pain you could eat you could eat

00:43:59.560 maybe soft boiled eggs and drink some beer and johnny ross this 11 year old kid says to him so babe

00:44:06.140 uh how you feeling babe oh my head's hurting johnny and my throat's you know my throat it really hurts to

00:44:13.260 talk now well who's gonna win the pennant babe and he answers some some some such undoubtedly he said

00:44:19.640 the yankees who's got the best pitching staff babe and babe mumble something and the kid runs out of

00:44:26.240 things to ask and babe ruth magnanimously and sadly puts his arm around johnny and says it's all right

00:44:34.500 we're both just about out of words and then he went home to die and then the outpouring of affection

00:44:41.220 then he was welcomed back yankee stadium where he lay in state in the rotunda that uh in that in

00:44:48.640 the ballpark that had been named for him the house that was built you know he lived a large larger

00:44:53.560 it's larger than life character how did how did he change the game of baseball and why are we still

00:44:59.060 talking about him 70 years after he died mike rozzo the general manager of the nationals in washington

00:45:06.060 said to me he was the original original he reconfigured the game in his own image he took

00:45:13.820 it out of the hands of the micromanagers like john mcgraw who were accustomed to moving men around the

00:45:21.200 bases station to station you know telling choke up he played they played little ball you know you choke up

00:45:27.240 and hit one to left field and we'll move this guy from first to second and you choke up and hit it to

00:45:32.860 left field and we'll move it you know second to third and bay ruth comes along and looks at this

00:45:37.380 and he was bigger than everybody else you know when he gets to boston in 1914 he's 6 2 and he weighs 185

00:45:44.340 190 maybe and he looks around he says well why should i do that when i can take one swing and put an end to

00:45:51.720 this so he literally reshaped the game the power game that is played today is a direct you know relative

00:45:59.780 of the of the power swing that bay ruth invented and used to hit 714 career home runs

00:46:08.200 having changed the game in ways it was played and the expectations of booms and cracks and

00:46:15.180 thwacks that would ricochet around yankee stadium they then had to make ballparks and equipment that would

00:46:24.380 that would hold him i mean up till then there were like kind of band boxes nobody hit balls over fences

00:46:30.140 one of the again then one of a writer for the new yorker pointed out that bay bruce invention of the

00:46:36.880 modern power game the home run also created a connection between player and spectator that never existed

00:46:45.940 before because in the moment that the spectator that the ball heads into the stands and the spectators

00:46:52.280 grab it they're they're connected in a way they had never been before so he recreated it in every way

00:46:58.740 he took on the institution when he confronted the first commissioner kennesaw mountain landis the former

00:47:06.600 federal judge over his right to barnstorm in the offseason there was this crazy rule that if you were on a

00:47:12.820 world series team you couldn't barnstorm because somehow that was going to diminish the clout of

00:47:20.400 what was then called big league baseball it didn't form major league baseball till later as a term of

00:47:26.720 art and bay bruce said to hell with that now he got himself in trouble and he got himself fined and

00:47:32.600 suspended but the rule was changed and from then on it was recognized that baseball players had a right

00:47:39.100 to make a living the best way they knew how in the offseason he took on the institution by insisting

00:47:47.260 upon his right to barnstorm against african-american players which other people did it is true but he was

00:47:54.960 babe ruth and so by playing with and against african-american players he gave he was giving sanction

00:48:02.560 to them as players he was also providing a a nice payday which god knows they needed but he was giving

00:48:09.460 credit to anyway and he articulated that you know the colorful play of the negro leaguers would certainly

00:48:16.020 be a good thing in in the major leagues and he took on management by insisting upon his right to have

00:48:23.680 someone represent his interests christy walsh and then and to try to rectify the ridiculous imbalance

00:48:31.420 and and power between owners and most of the players who were semi-literate or if you know uh or you know

00:48:41.620 certainly not equipped to go into negotiations to represent themselves and that imbalance would would

00:48:47.820 continue for most players all the way through till when roger marris broke the record he tried to go

00:48:54.720 he tried to bring his brother with him to negotiate his 1962 contract after hitting 61 home runs in 61

00:49:01.940 and the yankees wouldn't let him bring his brother because his brother was an accountant

00:49:05.420 so you know he really struck a blow for players rights and he understood that by barnstorming by taking

00:49:13.880 the game out beyond the mississippi river which is of course as far as major league baseball went

00:49:20.840 in those days he was doing something good for major league baseball he was creating a market

00:49:27.840 that that that would take another 30 years for major league baseball to begin to exploit

00:49:33.120 and besides changing baseball he changed sports in general we're like we are we see the legacy of ruth

00:49:38.660 with endorsement deals i mean you talk about in the book some of the strides he made in

00:49:43.580 publicity law which didn't exist before him in cases that he fought and those guys who've got

00:49:48.880 nike deals can thank babe ruth for that and knowing how little history most athletes uh study these days

00:49:56.700 i don't think they have any clue how much they owe him well jane levy thanks so much time it's been a

00:50:01.820 pleasure thank you i really enjoyed it my guest today was jane levy she's the author of the book the big

00:50:07.720 fella it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about her

00:50:11.800 work at her website janelevy.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash ruth where you find

00:50:17.380 links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:50:19.660 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#554： Babe Ruth and the World He Made

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