{"id":340,"date":"2014-03-21T14:32:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T18:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=340"},"modified":"2015-10-17T23:38:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T03:38:27","slug":"scd-bob-creamerbabe-ruth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=340","title":{"rendered":"Sports Collectors Digest: Bob Creamer\/Babe Ruth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel<\/span><\/p>\n

The best baseball biography ever written, for my money, was BABE: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert W. Creamer.<\/p>\n

To me, that makes Bob Creamer the Babe Ruth of sports biographers.<\/p>\n

On this I\u2019m not alone. A lot of students of the game\u2019s literature agree. Some also put his Casey Stengel biography right there in the top ten.<\/p>\n

With attention soon to be focused on Ruth again, as Barry Bonds prepares to surpass his 714 home runs and move into second place behind Henry Aaron, I asked Bob recently whether the timing of his publication \u2013 1974 \u2013 was related to that being the year in which Aaron passed Ruth.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly at the end, it was,\u201d said Bob, now 82, still on top of his game. \u201cI began the project in 1969, when no one was thinking Aaron had a chance. He was 35 and had just over 500 homers going into the season. Mostly, I just wanted to do a book on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creamer, one of the founding fathers of Sports Illustrated, had four books to his credit, but all were collaborations. He had ghost written Mickey Mantle\u2019s The Quality of Courage, done \u201cas told to\u201d works with broadcaster Red Barber and umpire Jocko Conlan, and combined with three other New York area sportswriters on a Yankee history book.<\/p>\n

A note from editor Peter Schwed suggested a bio of Ruth. There had not been one of significance since his autobiography in 1948, the year of his death. And by the late \u201860s, writers were feeling a greater freedom to say more, and paint a bigger picture of sports figures. It was felt that a Ruth book, which tried to capture the plusses and the minuses, was due.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoger Kahn had done a great piece on Ruth in Esquire,\u201d Creamer recalled. That was also an impetus. I\u2019d seen Ruth play as a kid \u2013 never met him \u2013 but they played a lot of doubleheaders in those days, and you really had a pretty good chance of seeing him homer if you went to a doubleheader. So many of my Ruth memories were of those home runs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruth\u2019s life was of course, a lot more complicated than those home runs. Yet, he was an uncomplicated man. He cared about pleasing himself, getting a laugh, eating his steak, misbehaving with the opposite sex, belching, and moving on.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone had a story about him, although I never did meet a woman who claimed to have slept with him,\u201d says Creamer. \u201cWould have liked to talk to one. I was with {teammate} Waite Hoyt, in the company\u2019s of Babe\u2019s lawyer, Paul Carey, and Hoyt said \u2018\u201cyou think Babe loved Claire?\u2019 And Carey said, \u2018I don\u2019t think he loved anybody.\u2019 He meant the Babe was awfully self-centered. He did what he wanted to do, without thinking of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

An example would have been his mistreatment of diminutive Jackie Farrell, a pal who later worked for the Yankees and accompanied Babe on many of his personal appearances. Writes Creamer, \u201cBefore the dinner he began to fool with Jackie Farrell\u2026. {Bud} Mulvey {part of the family that owned the Dodgers}, watched in distaste as Ruth playfully twisted Farrell\u2019s arm. \u2018Jackie was really in pain,\u2019 Mulvey said, \u2018and Ruth was roaring with laughter. I never could like him after that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other hand,\u201d notes Creamer, \u201con impulse Ruth would do extraordinarily kind things for people he hardly knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creamer worked on his Underwood typewriter in the basement of his Tuckahoe, NY home, tacking notes on a bulletin board, trying to whittle the huge legend of Ruth down to life size. There was so much material.<\/p>\n

The MacMillan Encyclopedia had just come out in \u201969, and was a huge asset. \u201cWaite Hoyt was great,\u201d says Bob. \u201cand Joe Dugan. They gave me so much. Claire Ruth was not very helpful. She was actually unpleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing when he could, tucking in time around his job at Sports Illustrated, he had produced 70,000 words \u2013 essentially a full book \u2013 and was only up to 1919, the year Ruth ended the Red Sox portion of his career. That\u2019s when he realized he had to edit down what he had. \u201cPeter Schwed was a very patient editor, but suddenly, Aaron was really threatening the Babe\u2019s record, we heard that a couple of other Ruth books were being prepared, and now, by the summer of 1973, Simon and Schuster wanted it done.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I promised to have it done by the end of the summer, which in my mind was the Autumnal Equinox, not Labor Day. And I did it. I worked mornings, nights, and especially my Sports Illustrated \u2018weekends\u2019 of Tuesdays and Wednesdays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creamer did an interview with the retired Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, a Ruth pal and ghostwriter who lived in nearby Bronxville. He related the story of a dying Ruth asking to see him.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Ford, I always wanted to see you.\u2019 It was just a polite thing to say. I stayed a few minutes and left and I spoke to Claire again across the hall and then I went home and the next day he was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how Creamer ended the book. \u201cPerfect. The end of his life. The end of the book. Done!\u201d<\/p>\n

The book came out in the summer of \u201974, some months after Sports Illustrated had run a multi-part excerpt. While never quite a best seller, it was an immediate hit, and remains in print to this day as the definitive Ruth bio. It is not overstating the matter to call it a classic.<\/p>\n

Now, a very sweet thing is happening. Leigh Montville, another SI alumnus who wrote the well-received Ted Williams biography this past year, is now taking on The Babe. It\u2019s time again. And Creamer, one of the nicest men in his profession, is passing on material to Montville, just as Bob Considine, Ruth\u2019s co-author of the \u201948 autobiography, passed on his recollections to Creamer at the 21 Club and Toots Shor\u2019s many years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel The best baseball biography ever written, for my money, was BABE: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert W. Creamer. To me, that makes Bob Creamer the Babe Ruth of sports biographers. On this I\u2019m not alone.… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2277,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template-full.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-340","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4s5bl-5u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2475,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/340\/revisions\/2475"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}