About this item
The untold story of Babe Ruth's Yankees, John McGraw's Giants, and the extraordinary baseball season of 1923Before the 27 World Series titles--before Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Derek Jeter-the Yankees were New York's shadow franchise. They hadn't won a championship, and they didn't even have their own field, renting the Polo Grounds from their cross-town rivals the New York Giants. In 1921 and 1922, they lost to the Giants when it mattered most: in October.But in 1923, the Yankees played their first season on their own field, the newly-built, state of the art baseball palace in the Bronx called "the Yankee Stadium." The stadium was a gamble, erected in relative outerborough obscurity, and Babe Ruth was coming off the most disappointing season of his career, a season that saw his struggles on and off the field threaten his standing as a bona fide superstar. It only took Ruth two at-bats to signal a new era. He stepped up to the plate in the 1923 season opener and cracked a home run to deep right field, the first homer in his park, and a sign of what lay ahead. It was the initial blow in a season that saw the new stadium christened "The House That Ruth Built," signaled the triumph of the power game, and established the Yankees as New York's-and the sport's-team to beat.From that first home run of 1923 to the storybook World Series matchup that pitted the Yankees against their nemesis from across the Harlem River-one so acrimonious that John McGraw forced his Giants to get to the Bronx in uniform rather than suit up at the Stadium-Robert Weintraub vividly illuminates the singular year that built a classic stadium, catalyzed a franchise, cemented Ruth's legend, and forever changed the sport of baseball.
About the Author
Robert Weintraub lives in Decatur, Georgia, but he grew up in the large shadow cast by Yankee Stadium, in Rye, New York, and is a lifelong Yankees fan. Weintraub has written about sports for Slate, Play (the late, lamented NY Times sports magazine) , ESPN.com, The Guardian, Deadspin, and many more. He is also a television producer, and has worked on programs airing on ESPN, ABC Sports, CNN International, Turner Broadcasting, Speed Channel, Discovery, and dozens of others. He has covered events large and small, from the Super Bowl, Olympic Games, and World Cup to the Dragon Boat Races in Taiwan. Weintraub has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney, and while he loves the American South (particularly its adherence to the religion of college football) , he dearly misses the ocean. When not working, Weintraub has cast aside a former life that included cage diving with Great White Sharks and scaling Uluru for one of domestic tranquility with his wife Lorie and two young children. The House That Ruth Built is his first book, hopefully of many.
