The House That Ruth Built

February 7, 2011
In his first book, Slate sports columnist Weintraub examines the 1923 New York Yankees, the team that opened Yankee Stadium and won the first of the Bronx Bombers' record 27 World Series titles. The center of this work is the clash between the Yankees' star, Babe Ruth, with his new "bashing" style of playing the game, and the classic "scientific baseball" epitomized by manager John McGraw and his New York Giants. While the Giants got the best of the Yanks in the '22 fall classic, Ruth and the Yankees' 1923 World Series victory over their crosstown rivals would change the face of baseball and New York City forever. Weintraub nicely infuses modern references like "imagine Ruth as Rocky Balboa preparing to wreak vengeance on Ivan Drago" into his 1920s descriptions. The book is comprehensive, and Weintraub details everything from the construction of the stadium and the careers of Ruth and McGraw to a detailed season overview and deconstruction of the 1923 World Series. The stories about Ruth and McGraw hold the narrative together, but it is the asides of forgotten personalities like Mose "The Rabbi of Swat" Solomon, Russ "Pep" Youngs, and Yankees co-owner Cap Huston that create a much-needed undercurrent of character and humor.

Starred review from March 15, 2011
The whole baseball year of 1923 is the frame for Weintraubs elegantly constructed narrative: the year the Yankees moved into their own stadium in the Bronx and won their first World Series. He does this month by month, winding back to cover the outsized personalities whofilled the front and back offices and the fields, and forward to cover the box scores and idiosyncrasies of every major game that year. Heywood Broun, Damon Runyon, and Fred Lieb (who coined the phrase of the title) covered the Yankees then, and their rich and evocative styles with their fulsome rhythms echo in Weintraubs prose. The story is familiar and yet not. Who knew that Hendrik Van Loon, author of the first Newbery winner, The Story of Mankind, (1922) gave Babe Ruth a lucky silver dollar just before the stadium opened? Or that the boy Harpo Marx used to steal fruit from the orchards behind Yankees owner Jacob Rupperts mansion on Fifth Avenue and 93rd Street? Even more enlightening is how different the game was then. John McGraw, who expected his Giants to beat the Yankees in the World Series in 1923 as they had in 1922, did not choose his starting pitcher for the first World Series game until just hours before the first pitch. There is no nickname ever used for a player that Weintraub overlooks nor any colorful phrase now common in baseball that he doesnt cite. Exhaustive, occasionally exhausting, but a treasure for the fan who cannot get enough.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)