The Selling of the Babe

January 1, 2016
Separating myth from truth in the most infamous trade in baseball history. The myth goes as follows: in 1920, the New York Yankees fleeced a cash-strapped Boston Red Sox owner, Harry Frazee, and in so doing got the game's greatest star, Babe Ruth. This lopsided trade resulted in the so-called Curse of the Bambino, which saw the Yankees become the most dominant team in all of professional sports while the Red Sox embarked on an 86-year championship drought that they only broke in 2004. The Yankees got the Sultan of Swat, and Frazee used his money to finance No, No, Nanette, the Broadway musical. In this crisp history, veteran baseball historian Stout (Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year, 2011, etc.) shatters the myth, providing an important corrective to the legend while also offering a fascinating history of baseball during a period of transition from 1918 to 1920. Ruth was a dominant player, but he was also a petulant, lousy teammate, inordinately selfish, and a far cry from what he would become. Frazee was not at all broke; indeed, he was thriving as a Broadway producer and owner. The mortgage on Fenway was a savvy business decision, not an act of Frazee being fleeced. Underneath the surface percolated tensions between two groups of owners, with the Yankees and Red Sox as, of all things, allies. Ruth would unquestionably become a phenomenon, but Stout makes clear that only in retrospect was the trade quite so ridiculous as it now appears. The author tells a good, well-focused story and makes a compelling argument, but he occasionally lapses into cliche, and, as with any revisionist history, this one occasionally overstates its case--though it might be a case worth overstating. Baseball history is full of hoary legends. Stout deftly challenges one of the game's biggest.

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February 1, 2016

Superstitious Boston Red Sox fans have long blamed the "Curse of the Bambino" for the team's 86-year World Series Championship drought, which lasted from 1918 to 2004. If the Sox had only held on to George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. after the 1919 season, the team's fortunes could have been very different. Then-owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth for cheap in order to fund the Broadway shows he ran, or so grumbled Sox fans for decades afterward. Here prolific sportswriter Stout (series editor, "Best American Sports Writing") seeks to set the record straight. The book debunks many of the myths and assumptions about the events leading up to the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees by the Boston Red Sox in 1919. Stout brings the era alive with its colorful characters, including Frazee, American League president Ban Johnson, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, and, of course, the Babe himself. VERDICT Stout uses his considerable skills as a writer and historian to show how this event helped bring about baseball's modern era. His portrayal of this pivotal moment is fully engaging, taking the reader back to that exciting time.--Brett Rohlwing, Milwaukee P.L.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016
Although baseball fans might groan at the idea of another book on Babe Ruth, author Stout, who edits the Best American Sports Writing series, brings reporting chops and fresh insights into one of the more momentous transactions in sports history: the 1919 sale of Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees. Among Stout's many salient points: Sox owner Harry Frazee was not so frivolous as to need to sell Ruth to finance the Broadway show No, No, Nanette but, instead, used the sale to purchase Fenway Park. And it was never certain that the mercurial Ruth, who'd hit relatively few home runs at Fenway (and relatively many at the Yankees' Polo Grounds), would succeed in Boston and, if he did, whether the Red Sox, who struggled to draw crowds, could afford Ruth's subsequent contracts. The Curse of the Bambino having lifted in the wake of Boston's 2004 World Series triumph, even Red Sox fans should enjoy this entertaining, myth-busting account.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)