>> Susan Reyburn: Okay, I'm Susan Reyburn, Curator of Baseball Americana. An exhibition currently running here in the Jefferson Building, and continuing through July of 2019. If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, I hope you will soon. Since we're talking about Babe Ruth here today. I'll point out that the exhibition has several items related to The Big Fella. His playing shoes, an incentive agreement he had with the Yankees, a 1933 baseball card. And clips of him on the, on the field. As well as his appearance as himself in the 1928 silent film classic, Speedy, starring Harold Lloyd. Today we continue with the second talk in our three-part series on New Baseball Publications. On Tuesday at noon, we'll hear from David Rapp. Author of Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America. But this afternoon, the library is very excited to have with us Jane Leavy. Author of the highly-anticipated new book, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created. It is available for sale at the back of the room. And after the talk, Jane will be on hand to sign copies. Then with your brand-new book, head upstairs and check out the exhibition. If you are a fan of baseball and of beautifully-written and deeply-researched biographies, you are probably well aware of our speaker today. Jane is the author of highly-acclaimed, best-selling works on two other towering baseball figures. Sammy Koufax and Mickey Mantle. And if you have not read A Lefty's Legacy or The Last Boy, be sure to add them to your reading list. She has also written a novel, Squeeze Play, about a newspaper beat reporter for the Washington Senators. Which drew on her own experiences as a Washington Post sportswriter. At the Post from 1977 to 1988, she covered baseball, tennis, the Olympics, as well as pop culture. She is a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism and her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. As for The Big Fella, Jane spent eight years researching and writing this book. A challenge not only because Ruth lived large. And left behind an extensive trail-blazing past full of rabbit holes to explore. But if I may abruptly jump to another metaphor. He represented a perfect storm. The coming together of the best player with the biggest personality on the best team on the largest stage in the country's most popular sport. During an explosion of media possibilities. No one else has ever occupied that unique intersection in American life. And who better than this award-winning biographer and lifelong fan to tell his story? Offering new insights just when you thought there was nothing more that could be said about Babe Ruth. So ladies and gentlemen, Jane Leavy. [ Applause ] >> Jane Leavy: I'm going to steal what she just said because it's better than I did. Wow! And I'm also taking off my shoes. That's the next thing that has to happen here. [Laughter] Oh! Much better. So hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. I, she's taken a little bit out of my speech. Hey, where's the clicker for moving the pictures, guys? Anybody know? [ Inaudible ] I was going to say some of that stuff. What you don't know about me is this. I now hold a Major League record. Which is for spending most consecutive nights alone with Babe Ruth. [Laughter] More certainly than either of his wives because he could leave them. And he couldn't get away from me. And it took eight years of intimate conversation between us for me to figure out how in God's name to tell a, not just a new story about him, but to tell it in a new way. When I started out, I had this image that's up on the screen in mind. From the very, very beginning. It was taken by a very famous fashion and celebrity photographer in 1922. At the Polo Grounds. And what enticed me about it, aside from the fact that by the way, the publisher got permission to flip it. He actually was sitting the other way. But it, they flipped it because the big, the big box store said if you have his face on the right, our sticker's going to go right in the middle of his forehead. So they flipped the picture. Which I'm stunned the Estate of Nickolas Muray agreed to. Nickolas Muray was a Hungarian photographer and fencer who would ultimately die in a fencing match. But he was known for taking pictures of people like Mar, Marlene Dietrich and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Claude Monet. And Frida Kahlo with whom he began a ten-year affair after taking her picture. So this was not the ordinary guy Babe Ruth was used to being shot by. This was a guy who wasn't just looking for the perfect mechanics of his swing or his uplifted chin as he headed down the first base line. This was a guy who was looking for him. And I think it took me a while to realize it, but the, the reason that the picture means so much to me is that it posed an essential question. What is he trying to hide? Look at how he's holding himself in? Now that hunch was characteristic of him. And it became more so as he got fatter and the belly went down. But even by then, and he's relatively young there. Look at how much he's protecting himself and look at the size of his hand. Which frankly I had to argue very forcibly with the publisher to show that much of. They wanted to obscure the whole thing. And I said, "You cannot have a picture of The Big Fella with The Big Fella. And not show the size of that, that hand." So that posed the question from the very beginning. What's he trying to hide? I spent a year, a whole year, reading everything that had been written. about him between hardcovers. And softcovers, and a lot of the newspaper stuff too. Because I knew that the first question was going to be, wherever I went, "Why in God's name another biography of Babe Ruth?" And I was going to have to find something new to say. And if there wasn't anything new to say, I wasn't going to do it. So I read everything there was about him. And what I discovered was that there's no boy. There's no little George, the name his parents gave him. In any of those biographies. He's a cipher. He doesn't exist. Now, I've been saying this line, now it's really a pleasure to say it here. If you tried to write a biography of Winston Churchill or God forbid, Donald Trump, and left out his childhood, you'd be laughed out of this institution. You could not write what would pass for biography without somebody's childhood. And the formative years that created, in this case, The Big Fella. But in sports biography, which is sort of a weird sub-genre, what passed for biography was really stories about somebody's career. Was the, was the life of a career, not and an athlete. Not really the life of a person. So I knew that if I was going to figure out who The Big Fella was and how he became that person. I was going to have to find that little boy. So, hoping this works. There he is. And what it says on there, in his handwriting because he autographed it to somebody named Ethel, no, Gertie, Herbie and Gertie. It says, "What a nice little boy at age three. But now, wow." Typical of him. Also the lack of grammar was typical of him. He flouted expectation and authority and governance in every single way, including grammatically. But if you look at that little boy, look at his eyes. They're no different than the ones of The Big Fella you just were looking at. And they're sad eyes. Now part of this is just physiognomy. It's the set of his face. But it's not all physiognomy. And what's significant about this picture to me is that's a picture of a, a kid comes from a fairly well-to-do family. People who were really dead-broke as his family has always been described. Don't get posed like this at age three in a frilly collar. So this, too, was a clue to me that something about the childhood, the skimpy biography of his childhood was way off. So there he is, and I'm walking up and down in Baltimore. The street that he took when he was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore when he was just three years older than this. That's part of the biography that everybody knows. That he was sent off to what is often called an orphanage. And that's why people thought he was an orphan. He wasn't. Or sometimes they said he was an incorrigible. That was a legal term of [inaudible] meaning that the court sent him. So he was a bad kid, a wanton kid. A reckless, ungovernable kid, hanging out on the, in the foggy ar-- , areas around the Baltimore harbor. That wasn't him either. And I figured if I'm going to find out what it felt like to be six, seven years old and dispatched to this reform school when you do have two parents. I'm going to want to know, I'm going to be able to reproduce exactly what he saw. As life as he knew it disappeared. So I took pictures from the B&O Railroad which has a great collection. Because their, their whole installation was near that area. I took a 1902 insurance, Sanborn map, Sanborn Insurance map. I took the cards, the index cards that had been collected by the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore that describe what was at every intersection in Baltimore in 1902. And I walked up and down West Lombard Street where, according to Westbrook Pegler, his first ghost-written biographer, autobiographer. Where he allegedly took, with his daddy, the number nine streetcar when his parents, hard-working, broke parents reluctantly, tearfully, sent him off to live with his Xaverian Brothers, who ran St. Mary's. So I'm taking pictures, and I've got this whole thing. And I go out Wilkins Avenue. And I'm getting out, and I'm walking in places that my kids don't want me to walk because it's not such a good area anymore. And I write the first chapter of the book. I know this is the beginning, right? It's a formative experience, being sent off. The trip from the home, from home to the home is the thing that created him. And then one day, [inaudible] in August 2017, long after that chapter was written. Up on my screen pops, for no apparent reason, a story about a Baltimore street cop named Harry C. Birmingham. Somebody can look him up for me. I can't remember if he was Patrolman 468 or 469, but he worked out of the western district in Baltimore. And his area was the bars along Camden Street where George Herman Ruth, Senior, ran a bar at the corner of West Camden and Packo, South Packo. Just a block away from the train station that was the site of commerce and tumult and noise and industry in Baltimore. And I'm reading this story. This nice-looking guy in his big, tall hat. And his Brilliantine moustache. And he looks great. And he says, You know it was my pleasure to take George Herman Ruth, Junior, out to St. Mary's for his father. I didn't think a young boy should be raised above a bar. Harry C was a teetotaler. He thought this was not a great place for Babe Ruth to be. And so he volunteered because George Herman Ruth, Senior, was an old friend of his. To take the boy away and take him to St. Mary's. Well there goes the tearful journey with daddy, right? And what's more, he says, "He was a mischievous kid, sure. But no more so than any other boy. And he certainly never gave us," meaning the police, "any trouble." There goes the bad kid. So all the pillars on which the biography, the accepted wisdom about Babe Ruth was built, disappeared. Just crumbled. So that meant I had to start over. And I had to start doing a whole lot more research. Because now I knew that something had gone on in that house and in that childhood that I had to get to the bottom of. Well one of the things that's happened that people in libraries know about. Is that the availability in just really the last ten years, I guess, of digitized archives, newspaper archives but also state archives. With birth records, death records, divorce records, arrest records. And probate wills, everything. Means that what I started out thinking was going to be a terrible disadvantage to me which is there was nobody alive to talk to. Nobody presently alive, as Casey Stengel might have put it. [Laughter] Was not the disadvantage that I had feared. Because what I had access to that Robert Kramer, Marshall Smeltzer, Robert Smith, Cal Wagenheim, Tom Meeney, and last but not least, Lee Steinberg. Not Lee Steinberg, Lee what's-his-name, Lee Montville, sorry. Couldn't get access to was the following. Babe Ruth's parents were divorced. Babe Ruth's father, George Sr., found his wife, and this is a direct quote from the deposition of the divorce. He found his wife with his bartender, also named George, on the, quote, dinging room floor. And he accused his wife, and she admitted to [door slam] oop, sorry. Trading sexual favors for booze. Kate Ruth apparently had an alcohol problem. George Ruth filed for divorce immediately, two days, month after. It was advertised in the Baltimore Sun. "I will no longer, I am no longer responsible for Katie Ruth's debts." Period. When the divorce was finalized on May 6, 1906, it was published in the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore American. Now what tells you is George Ruth, Sr. was a pretty prominent guy. He wasn't this, you know, slug of a poor bartender. He was important enough to have his divorce be on a page of the newspaper. So suddenly, it's like you know, all you remember, when we had those kaleidoscopes, in childhood? We're all old here, so you know, those cardboard things? [Laughter] With the pieces of glass that would just sort of tumble and fall into place? That's what that moment was like. It was oh my god. He suddenly makes sense. Also in those records were the birth and death records of his siblings. Now his sister Mamie, who was the only one who survived to adulthood. Always said that Kate Ruth gave birth to eight kids. I could not find the set of twin, twin boys she said were born. But I could find these six other kids. Of those six kids, four died. Two of starvation. And little George Ruth, that kid, watched his brothers and sisters die. One by one by one. And despite watching them die, he was still sent away. So what are you going to think? You're seven years old, not eight, as his mother told him. Because she got his, his birthdate wrong. You're going to think, what did I do to deserve this? You got two children left, and you still don't want me? So off he goes to St. Mary's. Where he is raised in dormitories with hundreds of boys, 130 boys on one floor of a dormitory. That was made for 90. They slept in wrought iron cots. Head to toe, with just enough room between the rows which kind of looked like pinstripes, frankly. For a bentwood chair, and to get at, down on your hands and knees and pray. There's not room for a single personal item. There's no deviation in any of the beds. They look exactly the same. These kids ate together, slept together, went through puberty together, and they played baseball together. Because baseball was not just something to do at St. Mary's. It was an organizing principle and a way of channeling a whole lot of hormones. And so what Babe Ruth knew, and what he was comfortable with was being with crowds of boys and men. This is at, in Syracuse in 1925. Look at them draped around his neck and his shoulders. Like one of his wives' fur boas. They're all, there's 5000 boys that tried to get into a single frame. There's also one little girl there. I don't know if you can see her over in the corner on somebody's shoulders. She just looks just like I did. I had same horrible haircut. [Laughter] And but they can't get close enough to him. And he doesn't care. Not only does not care that they're draped all over him. Try that with Bryce Harper today or Aaron Judge or. There's not a hint of claustrophobia in that smile. "He chafed at every constraint," his daughter Julia tells me. Including having his feet tucked under, in under the covers. But not at this. This is where he lived. This is where he was most comfortable in his skin. And this is why he was the perfect person to be America's first modern celebrity. The focus of that kind of mass adulation. Being public is what he knew. Being alone was unnatural to him and uncomfortable to him. This photograph is taken on July, hold on a second, July 26, 1926. And it's taken at the same airfield on Long Island where Lucky Lindy would take off for Paris ten months later. And it's a PR shot that was organized by his agent. And among the many ways that Babe Ruth was a revolutionary is this. He hired the first sports agent. A guy name Christy Walsh. A failed newspaperman, failed cartoonist, failed ad man. Failed PR guy who in desperation went to Babe Ruth's hotel room, snuck in the window. Slapped him on the ass, and said, "I want to represent you." Babe was in bed with a blonde at the time, by the way. [Laughter] Babe, and Christy Walsh would do anything, anything. And Babe Ruth would agree to do it. To promote him, to maximize his income. You can't believe what a radical notion that is. That a, that a ballplayer should be treated economically as an entertainer. Not just for what he did on the field. But for what he brought to the field. What he brought to the New York Yankees. So I happen to have here with me an expert on that. His name is Michael Halpert. He's a Professor of Economics at University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse. Michael, only his mother calls him Michael, I'm sorry. Mike has been my go-to guy for, we think it's three years, maybe four. He when you look at the book and you look at all the numbers that are in there, that makes sense of this vast marketing operation that Christy Walsh created. Mike's responsible for all of them. And one of the things Mike explained to me was that when Harry Frazee, the really stupid owner of the Baltimore, of the Red Sox, decided to sell him off in 1919 for the 1919 World Series because he was a pain in the neck. And because he wanted money that he frankly deserved for having helped win all those World Series for putting tushies in seats. Jake Rupert, the president, the owner of the Yankees, I know a lot of you hate the Yankees. I'm sorry. He was really smart. He paid $100,000 for him in four installments. But Frazee was so broke, tell me if I've got this right, Mike. He was so broke that he also borrowed $300,000 at seven percent interest. But Ruth, the purchase of Ruth was $100 Grand at six percent interest. Don't even keep doing that. Which means that after six years. Tell me, Mike, I'm doing this right? Okay. After six years, Harry Frazee had paid more than $100,000 in interest. Which means Harry Frazee paid the Yankees to take Babe Ruth. [ Laughter ] Mike, could you stand? Could you stand up, Mike? This guy's amazing. [ Applause ] So he becomes this eco-- economic juggernaut. Oops. And he becomes this economic juggernaut at this absolutely unprecedented moment in American history and technology. This is the back page of the Daily News, America's first tabloid. The back page went, became, became a thing for the first time in November 1919. A month and a half before Jake Rupert bought Babe Ruth. And a month and a half before Prohibition came in. So Jake Rupert, no dummy, as we see. Knew that he was going to have to make some money some other way other than selling beer. What's he, what's he going to make money at? And he had lost money in this ball club for the free, for the three previous years. He's going to make money off the Yankees. And how's he going to make money off the Yankees? He's going to bring in Babe Ruth and have him hit a whole lot of home runs. And the new tabloid press and the radio which was just coming into existence in terms of popular entertainment. First ballgame broadcast was broadcast in August 1921. The, from Pittsburgh. [Inaudible audience comment] Thank you, right. Exactly right. That's all in the book. I got it. [Laughter] And so this is, this is 1920, so this is before radio. And before radio and before telepics and telegraphs and all the mechanisms for disseminating news that, that we now think are old-fashioned. Right? Every sports story was local. Your, your, your fame was as wide as the circulation of a newspaper. In short, as far as the newsboy could throw. And now suddenly it's going everywhere. In 1925, the Chicago Tribune and the, and the Daily News invented a system called telepics which meant that they could overnight a photograph. It was expensive. But they could overnight a photograph from New York to Chicago or New York to Los Angeles which they did. When Joseph Patterson, publisher of the Daily News decided to out Babe Ruth's mistress, Claire Hodgson. They also used telepics when he hit his sixtieth home run in 1927. And by 1927, so much had changed that two networks, radio networks, two national net, radio networks. NBC which went live on New Year's Day 1927, and CBS both broadcast the World Series coast to coast. That is just six years after this picture was taken at the Polo Grounds. And that was taken because fans on the East Side of Manhattan had no other way of getting updates from the ballpark about what was going on during a, the pennant-deciding series against the Cleveland Indians. So this guy come with his pigeon, who's flying back and forth from the Polo Grounds to the East Side of Manhattan with updates. So 1921, September 1921, a month after the first game was broadcast, 1927 national coast-to-coast broadcast of the, of the World Series. It is impossible for us, except maybe if we remember pre- and post-computer, to understand how fast the world was changing. And how big that was going to make Babe Ruth. I love the pigeon. I really had to, I tried to find the guy's relatives. I couldn't find it. Anyway, okay. Hold on. Now I know why people lick their fingers. Which I always thought was gross. So with the mass media came the advent of marketing and PR. This was all being designed and invented and propagated by three guys in New York. Ivy Lee, who represented the Pennsylvania Railroad. Edward Bernays, who sold soap and Lucky Strikes, and God knows what else. And Bruce Barton, who sold Calvin Coolidge. [Laughter] So now you've got mass media. And you've got a famous guy, and you're going to put that together with what? Disposable income that has suddenly become available in the post-World War I era. And this is a picture of Babe Ruth standing, I think it's outside the Ansonia where he stashed his blondes. And that's where Cristy Walsh found him in bed with a blonde. And he's reading a, a, an endorsement for the instruction book from Walsh's first client. A, a, a racing guy, car guy named Ray McNamara. So what you have here in this fabulous picture. What a great car, you know? Is synergy, branding, product placement. It's all starting there, and Christy Walsh, who was really the original Jerry Maguire, and a visionary. Is putting Babe Ruth together with his other client, one that's going to help this. One's going to help that. You know, synergy. Synergy actually in those days was a medical term but it, it's been hijacked since. And with all these broadcasts, and with the newspapers came mass adulation. One of his granddaughters said to me, "Everyone wanted to claim a piece of The Babe." I told a radio station this morning in Alabama about this picture. I'm not sure they were so thrilled with my disquisition on this. This was taken in a bandbox in Alabama as the Yankees made their way north. They always barnstormed north. And one of the ways that Babe Ruth made money was that he was paid to appear in every exhibition game. It's been written that actually he would be fined if he didn't. But that's wrong. They did it the other way. It was the carrot, not the stick. And Mike, do you remember how much he got? >> Depends on the year. >> Okay, this is '25, I think. [ Inaudible ] Yeah. Not, not chump change then, you know? So these folks are, you know, consigned to the part of the ballpark as there was in every ballpark in America, that was open to African Americans. But look at them reaching for him. And what this picture speaks to among other things. And is you know the reason it's so lovely and significant historically is you might know, not know this, but it goes back to the beginning and not knowing about his childhood. People thought he was passing. His mother must have passed over. Hmm? Look at those lips. Look at that nose. There was absolutely no scientific evidence. It is not true. One of his, his grand, great niece contributed DNA. I had it tested. Not true. But it was based on playground stereotyping that caused him to have a nickname that I'm not going to repeat because it's bad, starting with the N-word. And the black community, throughout America, believed he was passing and believe-- secretly believed he was a brother. And wanted to believe that because that meant they could be or were being represented in Major League baseball years before the color barrier was, was broken. Okay, next one. This is Babe Ruth with his first wife, Helen. And their adopted daughter, Dorothy. Taken at his farm in Sudbury, Massachusetts. It is quite simply a PR shot. Taken by Christy Walsh who sent him there because he'd gotten himself in trouble and they needed to clean up his reputation. And so off to the, to the country he went to chop wood. Which he paid other teenagers to do. And he actually had a car designed, a Packard, with a 55-gallon tank so that he could drive back and forth to New York without having to get gas. And he would spend the weekends in New York. And then he would come back to Sudbury and pretend to be Farmer Ruth. Now I want to say about this family, because I think it's actually, it's quite tragic. And my editor says I can't tell you everything. So you have to read the book, what happened. But that little boy who had no family, who was dispatched by his family. His first instinct when he got out of St. Mary's was not to eat everything, smoke everything, screw everything. Forgive me. But that's how ballplayers talk. It was to marry the first woman who was nice to him. A waitress at a coffee shop. Helen Woodford. And in that, I, I find that incredibly touching because what's he trying to do? He's trying to give himself the family he never had. And he is conforming, not defying, but conforming to norms. That it didn't work out, that he didn't know how to be a husband or a father is hardly shocking. It's true of many Major Leaguers. But that was his first instinct. Not to be the reckless, rambunctious, out-of-control guy you've all read about. That said, he treated his first wife terribly. And he didn't do very well by his daughter, Dorothy, who's the little one between him and his second wife, Claire. Who he'd began a relationship with in the month after Yankee Stadium opened. And he would create a new life with. They would adopt each other's children. Julia, who's on his right, is that right, his right? Is still alive. She's 102 years old. And when I first met her, she's the one who gave me the first clue that there was something missing in the, in the arc of his, of his life. She was the one who said, "Oh, by the way. Did you know that Kate and George were separated?" And I went, "Oh, no." But she also told me this. That explains some of those appetites later. She said the one thing he ever told her about his life at St. Mary's was that he never felt full. Now that's not just a statement about the fact that the Brothers had all of six cents to feed each child each day. It's also a statement of deprivation and the absence of the love, guidance, familial support that you would have wished he would have had. This is Babe Ruth, probably at his happiest. He's out fishing at the end of a Vaudeville tour in 1926. Where he was happiest was with the guys. Doing guy things. And there was everywhere he went, there were guys who were happy to buy him booze, to get him broads, to take him fishing, to take him hunting. Whatever he wanted, it was there for him. And this is taken off Coronado Beach. The two guys on the left are fishing reporters who both wrote stories about it. The other guy is, was a man-about-town. Very handsome devil named Carl Clint who, wasn't a fixer so much as he was a guy who would make sure Babe Ruth would get whatever he wanted. He wanted a fishing charter? He was there. He wanted a bathtub full of gin? He was there. And they stayed friends for quite some time. At the end of that barnstorming tour, this picture was taken and send back to New York to show Jake Rupert and Miller Huggins, the manager of the Yankees. That yes, he was taking care of himself. [Laughter] He was resting up. Now if you look really closely, I think he's playing possum, as my mother would have said because the one thing about Babe Ruth. That made him the "Ultimate American," which is how The New York Herald Tribune described him when he died. Was that he never sat still. He was restless and he had the energy of the country as it was expanding. Before the crash. And you know he, he, anybody Yiddish know you a little Yiddish? He had shpilkes. He just could not sit still. And he was the epitome of that decade. Hyperkinetic, ruthless, and ineffably upwardly mobile. Before this season, on, on New Year's Day right around when that umbrella picture was taken, he was called by a newspaper that said, "Have you got a New Year's resolution for the Yankees?" And he says, "Yeah, I promised 60 home runs to Jake." What a thing to say! He hadn't hit more than how many? Fifty-- ? Fifty-nine since, in 1921. People had thought he was washed up. He crashed and burned in '25. And while he had a good season in '26, he also ended the World Series by getting thrown out at second, trying to steal second base with two down in the ninth. So nobody really expected much of him in 1927. And hot, damn! This was a man who lived to make promises and to keep them. So he runs around the bases on September 20, 1927, crowing, bellowing! "Sixty, count 'em, sixty! Let's see some other son of a bitch do that!" [Laughter] And right after that, he leads the Yankees to a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He hits the only two home runs in the series. And then Christy Walsh, the, the, the, the emissary of SWAT takes them out on the road. On a barnstorming tour. Scheduled to go to 21 cities and replete with lots of PR shots. This one says, "Appreciation to Matt Gallagher for doing the best ballyhoo on our tour, 1927." And I love it just because I love the language. But Walsh, who was as straight a dude as he looks like in his, in his suit there. I think he was born in a three-piece suit. Was only four years older than Babe Ruth, but he became his governor. He became a father figure. He by this point, he had tricked Babe Ruth into saving the money that he otherwise would have spent. All the money that he earned on the barnstorming tours and the Vaudeville tours and the products and the appearances. Christy Walsh tricked him into saving. On his 33rd birthday, which would have been February 1927. He said, "You know, Babe, it would be a really good trick if we got all these bankers together. And you announce that you're going to fine yourself a thousand dollars per year. For all your bad deeds, and say you've reformed and you're going to put it in a, in a trust fund." Right? So Babe says, "Yeah, that's cool. You know, I'll do it." Babe would do anything. And he signs the check. And when, as soon as the cameramen go away, he says, "Okay, I'll take my money back." And Christy says, "It's an irrevocable trust." And that irrevocable trust which Mike analyzed to a penny to explain how. And this is all in, in the book. How it is that Babe Ruth did not go broke. In 1927, this year, the year this picture's taken. Babe Ruth is on the first year of a three-year, $70,000 contract with the New York Yankees. He also makes $73,000 in outside income. If you put that together, according to my friend Mike. In 2016 dollars, that's $36 million dollars. That's how much he was making. That's how rich he was compared to the average American. And Christy Walsh, by virtue of tricking him, got him to save what otherwise clearly would have been dissipated. Because he was dead broke in 1925. Okay, let's see. Now, when I say he would do anything, I'm not kidding. He was the ultimate gamer. This was a guy who needed to please and got joy out of doing so. So this is a photograph taken at the AMCO plant, the American Milling Company plant on the barnstorming tour of 1927 in Omaha. And this is where we get really modern. Because they suddenly said, "Oh, this chicken is the champion chicken egg-producing layer of 1927. She's laid 166 eggs straight. Let's change her name from Lady Norfolk to Babe Ruth, the Babe Ruth of layers! And let's bring Babe Ruth to the henhouse! And let's have Babe Ruth cradle the other Babe. And let's put little stories in every newspaper in America." This was on the wire service. "Two Babes." That's the picture that went out. And it wasn't just that he was willing to do it. He's obviously having a really good time. And I actually, believe it or not, was able to find footage of this moment. Which has never been screened before. So here you go. It takes a little bit but, and it tells you a little about the Nebraska egg industry first. Which is what they were trying to shill for. But here it goes. And by the way, that was not very good compared to other egg-laying states. Two champions. [ Laughter ] And that's where the still comes from, right? And then Lou gets the 171st egg. [ Laughter ] Want to see it again? It's really cool! [Laughter] I love-- oh. Oh, well, sorry. We went to this is taken just a tad later on the tour. With a little boy named Jack Whitey Stewart. And Jack Whitey Stewart was the bat boy for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, which was basically considered the third Major League. And he got that exalted job because his father was a San Francisco dog cop. He had the, he walked bloodhounds around San Francisco looking for bodies. And when he wasn't doing that, he volunteered to do security for the Seals. And so young Jack here gets to be Babe Ruth's bat boy. I found Jack's daughter. And son who contributed this picture. So this has never been seen either. And the reason that I wanted to include it is look at those hands! Look at them. I mean, the one that he's got on his hip looks like a backhoe. [ Laughter ] He wasn't just huge as a marketing guy. He wasn't just huge in terms of what he made or the number of home runs he hit. Or how far he hit them. He was literally bigger than the game. He was 6'2" and when he was in trim, which he wasn't exactly here. When he was with the Red Sox in 1916, he was probably about 195 pounds. Here he weighed himself that say in San Francisco and he weighed, he weighed 235. And he said, "That's a lot of weight." But he was so much bigger than everyone else. Bigger than the pictures-- you can find footage and I, I have. Where he's the, the stuff that they're throwing him is such slop. That's for you, for people who don't know baseball, that's junk, slow, whatever. That he would have to shuffle his feet in, in the batter's box to try to time how slow it is. Today that's known as the Babe Ruth drill. For batting coaches who use it for guys who they say have a dead lower-half. When they're trying to teach them to catch up with the ball. So he took pictures like this with boys across the country. None of them show his enormity better than this one does. And Jack, who for reasons that I don't, I still don't understand this. Children don't understand. Came away from that experience a bit embittered and didn't think he was such a nice guy. And say that Lou Gehrig didn't want to pose with him. Because Gehrig didn't like his morals. How an eight-year-old was supposed to know that, I don't know. But by the time Jack died, he'd come to a different understanding of his relationship. Oh, there it goes again. With Babe Ruth. And when he died, he was a member of what's called the San Francisco Baseball Alumni Association? Yes. Old-timer's Alumni Association. And at his wake, Jack was buried with the Jersey he wore the day he was Babe Ruth's bat boy. So this is Babe Ruth as king of the world. And that's what I really wanted to do in this book. I wanted to give people a feeling of what it was to be Babe Ruth, at the top of the world. And what it was like to be with Babe Ruth when he was at the top of the world. It never got any better than this for him. He just kept doing the same thing. More of it. Yankees didn't actually win that many more World Series with Ruth and Gehrig. Except of course the famous one in 1932. Where he hit the [inaudible] at Wrigley Field. No, I don't know. I don't know. [Laughter] So he played until the Yankees decided he was too old, fat, and slow to be on their roster. And he went to the Boston Braves, back to Boston. And the only team that would have him for a very brief time in 1835. And then he quit. Three weeks after he quit, he made his first public appearance at a West Chester, New York, country club, playing at a charity softball game. He has grease paint whiskers and, and this ridiculous uniform that's supposed to be from the Swiss navy? I mean, really? [ Laughter ] And all, all the fancy people from West Chester watched him make a fool of himself. And if you ask what his life was like for the next 13 years, it was like this. That's all there was for him. Baseball turned its back on him. The institution that he had come to regard as a family had no use for him. And the saddest part about it, and you can certainly see sadness in that face. Is that it was in many ways a re-- , a reincarnation of the abandonment that he experienced as a young boy. He had been abandoned once again, and he couldn't possibly understand it. Any more than he could have as a seven-year-old boy. So the last 13 years of his life were a series of ridiculous, sometimes money-paying gigs. A brief half a season in a Dodger uniform where he got into a fight with Leo Durocher. And was blamed for it even though he wasn't responsible. And then he got sick. This is his last birthday. He's 53 years old. He's got nasopharyngeal cancer, not throat cancer, not esophageal cancer. Nasopharyngeal cancer. Which my friend [inaudible] here, the doctor, helped me understand. And translate all the stuff I wouldn't have understood. And how did he spend his fifty-third birthday? With two little boys he didn't know. He would be dead six months later. But not before he went to Yankee Stadium for a belated farewell. This is not Babe Ruth Day. Babe Ruth Day was the year before and the Yankees declined at that point, or forgot, if you want to be generous. To retire number three. So on the 25th Anniversary of the 1927 team, they gather, they gathered all the old guys together and brought them back. And they said, "You know, Babe, why don't you manage the old-timers?" How cruel is that? This man who just wanted to be, have a place in baseball. I mean, how much did he want to manage? I don't know. I think he just wanted to be wanted. So what do they offer him? Manage the old-timers in this game. But it was raw, it was cold. And he was too sick to stay for the game. So he never did manage at Yankee Stadium. This is the day that Nat Fein, New York Herald Tribune photographer took the picture that won the first Pulitzer Prize for sports photography. And it's the opposite of this one. It's the one that's taken from the rear where you see the number three. Coming up out of the dugout. Eddie Robinson, later a Yankee, he's now the oldest living Major Leaguer, by the way, and a lovely man. Saw how hard it was for him to climb up the stairs. You know those, those steps were pretty steep. And as a young man, you'd gallop up and down them in your spikes. As a man dying of cancer, very weak, and in a lot of pain. Eddie said, "I think he might need some help." So he gave him Bob Feller's bat. Bob Feller was the starting pitcher for the Cleveland Indians that day. And Babe Ruth used it kind of the way you would use a, like this. He had his two hands like this. So that he could actually push down on the step like that. It wasn't enough to just one hand. And he got himself up. Took a few paltry swings for the photographers. And he said his farewell. He was dead two months later. And a hundred thousand people passed by his casket in the rotunda of Yankee Stadium. Where finally the Yankees found a way to greet him and bring him back. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Questions? I went, I went long. Yes, sir? [ Inaudible Question ] Well Jonathan's insight into that came from Eleanor Gehrig. So you know in, in 1927 on this tour, they're buddies. Babe Ruth's showing Lou Gehrig as a young guy. He's probably a virgin. He's never been west of the Mississippi. Goes to Ogden Canyon, and he's surprised that there's no cowboys and Indians, you know? He was a naive kid from Upper Manhattan with an overbearing mother. Babe Ruth was the motherless boy. So in a way they were a perfect pair and they were friends. And if you read the book, please read the book. [Laughter] Their relationship then is amply documented. The, the old trope is that what got in the way between them was that the second wife, Claire, dressed the first child from his first marriage, not as nicely as she dressed Julia, her own daughter. Dorothy's own children said to me, "You know what? She was so provocative and so angry that if they said dress up for the newspaper guys, she'd climb in a coal bin." She was a tomboy, like me, actually. What really put the kibosh is when they went to Japan after Babe Ruth played his last season for the Yankees in 1934. And they go off to barnstorm through Japan. And Helen, Eleanor, excuse me, and, and Claire run into each other on deck. And they say, "You know, this, this feud is really stupid. You know, why don't you come back to our stateroom? Babe's got some caviar and champagne." Well, Eleanor says, "That sounds pretty good." And so she goes and she spends the afternoon with Babe and Claire, drinking champagne and eating caviar. While Lou Gehrig, the earnest bridegroom, is searching the horizon for his dead wife. [Laughter] And when he finally finds out where she has been, and she was quite tipsy, you know. He wouldn't talk to her, to her for a week. And he didn't talk to Babe Ruth for five years. So that's that story. Okay, somebody else? Yes, sir. >> Yes, which actor do you think best portrayed Babe Ruth? >> Jane Leavy: Babe Ruth. [ Laughter ] And he played Babe Dugan in one of his movies, you know. He could play himself better than anybody. They're all awful. [Laughter] Yeah, back there? >> Parenthetical question. You mentioned that his father was more of a man of means than people thought. Why did two children die of starvation? Was there some sort of neglect or abuse of those kids? Jane Leavy: Surmise is, has to come-- I mean, the, the death, cause of death listed on the birth certificates is marasmus. Which is an old word for malnutrition. You know, there, there's evidence, and I spoke to experts about what life was like in Baltimore. That because it was one of the last unsewered cities in the world in the United States, the rates of infant mortality were much higher than they were elsewhere in the United States. There was no refrigeration, there was no pasteurized milk. But even given that, the percentage of children that they lost was way higher than what was going on in the city in general. I don't venture a guess. I mean, was it because she was drinking? Maybe. Was it because you know there was a lot of disease? You know, and, and they were susceptible? I mean, there had been plenty of epi, epidemics in Baltimore in the, in the 1880s and 1890s. Death certificates don't tell you that. They just give the cause of guess. [Inaudible] [ Inaudible Question ] Michael. [Inaudible audience comment] Mike, you have to answer that for me. >> Michael Halpert: Yeah, he wrote a great book. And [inaudible] because in 1919, you have no idea what Babe Ruth is going to do. So when James says that this turns out to be the greatest steal in history. That is [inaudible] true. But in 1919, it wasn't that obvious. That it was, it was going to be a big deal because, because [inaudible] said predicting is really tough. Especially if it's the future, right? [Laughter] >> Jane Leavy: Yes, sir? [ Inaudible Question ] Well the French really hated him. And he didn't like them back much either. He went back through France. Certainly he is given fairly a lot of credit for the development of Japanese baseball. But at the same time, the guy, one of the guys who was responsible, newspaper guys who was responsible for bringing him was stabbed to death by a nationalist. Shortly after Babe Ruth left Japan. So the, the, the seeds of what would take over the world, you know, six years later were already present. In fact, you know, the Japanese, apparently the Samurais said, well, you know, they had this to-hell-with-Babe-Ruth cheer. And the Kamikaze pilots would go to their deaths, you know. "To hell with Babe Ruth." So the New Yorkers sent a, a, a guy to his apartment on Riverside Drive to ask Babe how he felt about that in 1944. And Babe Ruth said, with his aplomb, "Sounds like the itty-bitty ones." [ Laughter ] Yeah? >> Did Babe Ruth have gambling problems [inaudible] known today to be suspended? If he had one, how serious was it? >> Jane Leavy: Did you all hear the question? How serious was his gambling. His spending and gambling were a big deal. He was broke between fines that were imposed by the Yankees. And you know, all, all through the first half of the '20s. And his pro-- really, truly profligate/generous lifestyle. He was dead broke. And when he and his first wife Helen agreed to separate in August 4, 1925. He had to come up with a hundred grand for her. He was in arrears on all of the four payments that he owed her. And he had taxes to pay. And he had to go to Christy Walsh for a loan. And Christy Walsh, being the smart guy that he is, said, "Yeah, I'll, I'll lend you the four grand that you need. But from here on out, you're not to buy any real estate without my approval. You're not to take any-- . You're not spending a dime." And he took over as his power of attorney in complete financial control. And he had the leverage at that point to do it. And it was the best thing that ever happened to Babe Ruth. I mean, he was dead broke. And yet he, he bet on the ponies a lot. I've never heard or read that he had a problem betting on baseball, like certain guy, Pete Rose? [Laughter] Okay, take one more? Okay. Yes, sir. >> Tell us mortals what it's like to pitch at Yankee Stadium. [ Laughter and Applause ] >> Jane Leavy: Well, I will leave you with this. It was my dream come true. I mean, I practiced as a child, walking in from the bullpen at Yankee Stadium with my Yankee jacket slung over my shoulder, just so. Like Ryne Duren. Ryne Duren was an early relief pitcher for the Yankees. Threw very hard and very fast and very wild. Because he couldn't see. And he always made a point of throwing the first pitch all the way to the backstop to scare the bejesus out of whoever might step to the plate. So I, I was prepared, you know. I, I practiced all summer. And by the end of August, I actually could throw sixty feet, six inches. And then I got some advice from Sandy Koufax. He said, "How far can you throw?" This was actually in June. I said, "Oh, forty, forty-five feet." He said, "Stand thirty." [Laughter] By the end of, just before I got, I went there, my arm went dead. I got a dead arm. [Laughter] So I call up Koufax, and I say, "Sandy, I got a dead arm." He says, "Hmm, dead arm. There's a very good shiraz named "Dead Arm." Get a good year. It's a really good wine." [Laughter] I don't remember what it was like. I was in a trance. [Laughter] If you go to the videotape, it looks like I bounced it. But as my daughter said, "Mom, you threw a curve." [ Laughter and Applause ]