Babe A Legend Comes to Life

Babe Ruth was a drunken, philandering bum. He was also incredibly devoted to children and always had time to sign and autograph or chat with a kid. I have to wonder how many home runs he would have hit if he hadn't been playing many games hung over, or probably still drunk from the night before. He was often overweight and he had a horribly unhealthy diet. Still, he dominated baseball for 10+ years and was hitting 40+ homers when few other TEAMS could hit that many over the course of a season.

Also, the called home run to center field at Wrigley in the 1932 World Series? It didn't happen. He did purposely let it go to 2 strikes before taking a swing. That itself is pretty gutsy. However, the called shot bit seems to be a fabrication of the press that got put into the movie about his life, and thus history was made.

It's a good book. The Babe really is a study in contradictions. An overweight drunken slob with a different girl or two in every city, who happened to be the most dominate baseball player of his era, and one of the all-time greats. This is a must read for any baseball fan.