Babe Ruth, the first modern celebrity

The Big Fella, Jane Leavy's new biography of Babe Ruth, is set amid this rowdy roadshow

Baseball, the future commissioner A Bartlett Giamatti wrote in 1977, is designed to break your heart. “The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

The fall of 1927 threatened to be especially lonesome. It was only October 8 when the Yankees, led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, dispatched the Pirates in a World Series sweep. But the season didn’t end that day, at least not for