![\"Dan](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.appelpr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/baberuthidol.jpg\")
<\/a>Dan Daniel penned this Ruth biography in 1930s, complete with player reflections of Ruth and images from Charles Conlon.<\/p><\/div>\n
So along came a 39-year-old sportswriter from the New York Telegram named Dan Margovitz, who simply went by \u201cDaniel\u201d as a byline. (Later, the byline became \u201cDan Daniel.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Daniel, born in New York in 1890, had been writing about sports since 1910, and would in fact stay on the beat into the 1960s, making him the senior New York baseball writer by the time he retired. His \u201cAsk Daniel\u201d column was always full of what is now called trivia, and sometimes he\u2019d get angry \u2013 in print \u2013 over oft-repeated questions, such as \u201cHas anyone ever hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve answered this many times in the past, and one more time I am telling you, no, no one has ever hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium!\u201d he would write.<\/p>\n
Presumably in a better mood, Daniel began work on Babe Ruth: The Idol of the American Boy, with the cooperation of Babe\u2019s agent, Christy Walsh. Walsh, Daniel acknowledged, provided \u201ccourtesy and help in allowing us to use the material in this book.\u201d He also thanked his employer, stating, \u201cBy arrangement with and the courtesy of The New York Telegram,\u201d suggesting portions of it may have run in the newspaper. The book, intended for a young audience, was published in 1930 by Whitman Publishing of Racine, Wis., best known for its children\u2019s books. The finished product was the size of a paperback, 5-by-7\u00bd inches, except it had a hard cover. It ran 106 pages and features photos by baseball\u2019s first great photographer, Charles Conlon, as well as three pages of statistics, breaking down Ruth\u2019s 516 home runs (as of 1929) and showing his year-by-year hitting as we are accustomed to seeing.<\/p>\n
Daniel has some interesting material, all approved by Walsh, but still, good Ruthiana. At one point, he gets Ty Cobb to talk about Ruth, and the Peach offers an interesting take on his rival:<\/p>\n
\u201cAll you baseball writers marvel that a young left-handed pitcher should have developed into so great a home run hitter, when, as a matter of fact, Ruth was helped greatly by discovering his power while he was a hurler,\u201d said Cobb.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what pitchers are at the bat. If they come through, great! But hardly anybody expects a hurler to make a hit. With that psychology helping him, Ruth was in a fine position to develop that great, free swing of his. While experimenting with this style of hit or miss, he found out that he had a lot of punch in those shoulders and that he could time the swing well enough to connect for quite a lot of long hits. That\u2019s how your great home run slugger was evolved.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are some little anecdotes that charm. One hundred years ago, for instance, when he broke in at the Baltimore Orioles training camp: \u201cUntil Ruth arrived in camp he never had been on an elevator. The first trip to his room on the third floor filled him with an amazing exhilaration. He set down a paper valise he had bought for a dollar to hold all his belongings and kept riding on that elevator in a series of startling adventures.<\/p>\n \u201cFinally, (Jack) Dunn (owner of the Orioles), had to warn the big boy of 20 that he had to give up riding elevators . . .\u201d<\/p>\n The book contains a foreword by the Babe (courtesy of Christy Walsh), in which Babe implores young boys to 1.) get eight hours of sleep, 2.) avoid tobacco in any form, 3.) do everything in moderation, 4.) not over-exercise and burn out, 5.) not to strain their eyes and to maintain perfect sight, 6.) practice obedience at home, at school and on the ball-field, 7.) be able to \u201ctake it\u201d \u2013 gameness being vital in baseball and your lifework, 8.) love and respect your home ties. \u201cNobody in this wide world can match your mother and your father in deep personal interest in you,\u201d 9.) Be neat in everything you do \u2013 in action and dress and language and 10.) the truthful boy goes farthest. He who is square with others will be square with himself.<\/p>\n If Babe even read this foreword, one wonders what sadness he might have felt talking about mothers and fathers \u2013 two people who didn\u2019t really exist in his childhood.<\/p>\n Anyone reading the book during the years of the Great Depression would be swept away by the portrayal of what Babe Ruth meant to baseball and to the youth of America. It is hardly a \u201cwarts and all\u201d biography, but it is typical of the early literature of the game in which hero worship is encouraged.<\/p>\n Dan Daniel wrote for more than 60 years before retiring to Florida, where he died in 1981. No one wrote more stories for The Sporting News than he did, and he was said to have written most of the editorials attributed to J.G. Taylor Spink, as well. He never had another book published, but he worked on an autobiography project with Jacob Ruppert, which was, regretfully, never completed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long Overdue Biography of Babe Ruth Rang True December 5, 2014 By Marty Appel There wasn\u2019t a biography of George Washington published until 1842, which was 43 years after he died. True, the book industry and the publishing process was… Continue Reading <\/a><\/p>\n