Breaking Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth, the iconic New York Yankees slugger who transformed baseball, captivated much of the country, and in the process made a fortune and earned an eponymous adjective—Ruthian—which signifies prodigious accomplishment, died in 1948. And yet he continues to fascinate baseball fans, journalists, and historians. Edmund F. Wehrle is one of those historians. His Breaking Babe Ruth wants us to take Ruth more seriously than most people probably have. That is, to view Ruth less as the Dionysiac, hedonistic, impulsive man-child with prodigious appetites for food, drink, and sex that we know (and many love), and to recognize him more as a thoughtful, labor-oriented rebel with a cause whom the baseball establishment exploited and spent a great deal of energy trying to discipline because, in its view, “Ruth could not be allowed to become larger than the game itself” (p. 8). Taking Ruth seriously, as something other than the 1920s embodiment of the rags-to-riches American dream, as something other than a symbol of American power and consumer excess, is a good idea

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