The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created by Jane Leavy
Read by Fred Sanders, with the recording produced by Harper Audio.
Reviewed by Ryan Paul Winn
From disposable child to baseball’s most valuable player, Babe Ruth experienced a transformation as epic as his legend. Biographer Jane Leavy eschews cradle-to-grave structure, instead exploring Ruth’s enshrinement by examining a 1927 cross-country barnstorming tour Ruth made with fellow New York Yankee Lou Gehrig. Reader Fred Saunders smooths the seams of the non-linear narrative, allowing Leavy’s admirable juggling of the Babe’s hits and strikes to resonate like cracks of bats in October.
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Ryan Paul Winn is a columnist and media critic who’s rarely without an audiobook or his earbuds. When not writing or teaching in the Liberal Studies department at College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wisconsin, he can be found researching overlooked history in local and national archives.