Babe Ruth : Launching the Legend

Rating:
Summary: 1920--A Pivotal Year in Baseball
Review: While it is true 1920 is the year Babe Ruth began his assault on American League pitchers with his batting prowess as a member of the New York Yankees, the year also was known for the unraveling of the fixed 1919 World Series, the hiring of baseball's first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the death of Cleveland Indians' shortstop Ray Chapman by one of Yankees' pitcher Carl Mays's submarine deliveries. It is often said the Babe's home run bat saved the game of baseball from the Black Sox Scandal, but people flocked to the park to see Ruth as a member of the Yankees in 1920 before the scandal broke in September of that year. The unfortunate death of Chapman is also dealt with in some detail. Carl Mays was a very unpopular player not only among rival players, but his own teammates as well. He was, however, absolved of any blame for intentionally hitting Chapman with the pitch. Mays won 26 games for the 1920 Yankees and compiled a better won lost record (209-126) than several Hall of Famers, but has been denied a place in baseball's hallowed halls. We are also provided with character profiles of Yankees' owners Colonel Jacob Rupert and Tillinghast "Cap" Huston, manager Miller Huggins, Judge Landis, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, and American League President Ban Johnson. The hiring of Landis put an end to any power that Johnson wielded in the American League. Even though it didn't happen until 1925 the author also mentions the matter of Wally Pipp's famous "headache" which caused him to sit out a game and was replaced by Lou Gehrig in the lineup who remained there for the next 14 years. In reality, Pipp's "headache" was a fractured skull due to being hit with a pitched ball in a previous game. Ruth remains the main focus in the book with his introduction of a new type of baseball that made Giants' manager John McGraw and Ty Cobb scorn the new type of baseball the Babe was now introducing. Both McGraw and Cobb appeared to be jealous of the attention Ruth was commanding in the newspapers. This book tells you more about what some of baseball's principal characters were like during this time period. The author concludes the book with a "what became of" several of the principal characters. My only complaint about the book is that at times the book got into too much of a play-by-play on some of the games the author covered. I've read much of what is in this book in other volumes, but I still found it to be interesting reading.