Babe Ruth

Discover the incredible life and enduring legacy of Babe Ruth in this captivating entry in the Up Close biography series about twentieth-century America. Babe Ruth is still regarded as perhaps the greatest baseball player ever to step on a diamond. Born into a poor family that lived above a saloon on the Baltimore waterfront, George Herman Ruth Jr. was sent to a Catholic reform school at age seven, and it was there he learned how to play baseball. He started out as a an ace southpaw pitcher, but it was with his mighty swing of the bat that he achieved his greatness, shattering every home-run record on the books in a legendary twenty-two-year career. In this engaging and fast-paced Up Close biography, award-winning author Wilborn Hampton tells how Babe Ruth—a man of gargantuan appetites, a fiery temper, and a generous heart—lived a life as colorful off the field as on.