Breaking Babe Ruth

Edmund F. Wehrle is Professor of History at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, where he has taught since 2000. He is the author of Between a River and a Mountain: The AFLCIO and the Vietnam War, and co-author with Lawrence Peskin of America and the World: Culture, Commerce, Conflict.

• Acknowledgments/ xiIntroduction/ 3Chapter 1: BASEBALL’S SEARCH FOR ORDER/ 13Chapter 2: FRENZY!/ 41Chapter 3: CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY, PART I/ 65Chapter 4: “A REMARKABLE CHANGE IN THE KING OF SWAT”: COMEBACK I/ 95Chapter 5: CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY, PART II/ 115Chapter 6: “IT WAS JUST A MATTER OF PHYSICAL CONDITION”: COMEBACK II/ 141Chapter 7: TRIUMPH/ 161Chapter 8: “FAIR ENOUGH IN TIMES LIKE THESE”/ 185Chapter 9: Removing Ruth/ 203Chapter 10: “A WELL-PAID SLAVE IS NONETHELESS A SLAVE”/ 223Notes/ 239Bibliography/ 275Index/ 283

“For nearly two decades, Major League Baseball waged a war, primarily through the press, against its greatest hero—on one hand using Ruth to save the game from its most tainted era, while on the other ‘infantilizing’ Ruth and feeding the myth of a naïve, wayward adolescent in order to control their savior’s more dangerous impulses.”—Nathan Michael Corzine, Instructor in History, Coastal Carolina Community College; author of Team Chemistry: The History of Drugs and Alcohol in Major League Baseball