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The Big Fella
- Babe Ruth and the World He Created
- Narrated by: Jane Leavy, Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
From Jane Leavy, the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax, comes the definitive biography of Babe Ruth - the man Roger Angell dubbed "the model for modern celebrity."
He lived in the present tense - in the camera’s lens. There was no frame he couldn’t or wouldn’t fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace - radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones, and loudspeakers - Babe Ruth "made impossible events happen". Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh - business manager, spin doctor, damage control wizard, and surrogate father, all stuffed into one tightly buttoned double-breasted suit - Ruth drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom.
His was a life of journeys and itineraries - from uncouth to couth, spartan to spendthrift, abandoned to abandon; from Baltimore to Boston to New York, and back to Boston at the end of his career for a finale with the only team that would have him. There were road trips and hunting trips; grand tours of foreign capitals and post-season promotional tours, not to mention those 714 trips around the bases.
After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927 - a total that would not be exceeded until 1961, when Roger Maris did it with the aid of the extended modern season - he embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig. Walsh called the tour a "Symphony of Swat." The Omaha World Herald called it "the biggest show since Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and seven other associated circuses offered their entire performance under one tent." In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times.
Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.
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- The Legend Comes to Life
- By: Robert W. Creamer
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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He was the biggest man baseball has ever produced. Babe Ruth transcended the sport that brought him fame, money, and adulation, moving beyond the limits of baselines and outfield fences into the mainstream of American life. In this extraordinary biography, Creamer uncovers the complex and captivating man behind the legend.
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The definitive biography of Babe Ruth
- By DKT on 05-30-16
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One Summer
- America, 1927
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country - a fascinating and gripping narrative featuring such outsized American heroes as Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, and yes Herbert Hoover, and a gallery of criminals (Al Capone), eccentrics (Shipwreck Kelly), and close-mouthed politicians (Calvin Coolidge). It was the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things and came of age in a big, brawling manner. What a country. What a summer. And what a writer to bring it all so vividly alive.
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Why 1927?
- By Mark on 10-18-13
By: Bill Bryson
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The Masters
- Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia
- By: Curt Sampson
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Masters golf tournament weaves a hypnotic spell. It is the toughest ticket in sports, with black-market tickets selling for $10,000 and more. Success at Augusta National breeds legends, while failure can overshadow even the most brilliant of careers. But as Curt Sampson reveals in The Masters, a cold heart beats behind the warm antebellum facade of this famous Augusta course.
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Okay Listen, but
- By Scott D. Loeffler on 05-02-08
By: Curt Sampson
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Wonder Girl
- The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias
- By: Don Van Natta Jr.
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Texas girl Babe Didrikson never tried a sport too tough and never met a hurdle too high. Despite attempts to keep women from competing, Babe achieved All-American status in basketball and won gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. Then, Babe attempted to conquer golf. One of the founders of the LPGA, Babe won more consecutive tournaments than any golfer in history. But at the height of her fame, she was diagnosed with cancer. Babe would then take her most daring step of all....
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Great read
- By Jajam on 01-07-18
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Opening Day
- The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.
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Great book, not so great reading
- By Joe Baseball on 08-30-07
By: Jonathan Eig
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42 Faith
- The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
- By: Ed Henry
- Narrated by: Ed Henry
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well. Through recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson's family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, Henry details a side of Jackie's humanity that few have taken the time to see.
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42Faith
- By Phillip L. on 04-11-17
By: Ed Henry
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A Nice Little Place on the North Side
- Wrigley Field at One Hundred
- By: George Will
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history?
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It's EEE-lia, not Ah-LEE-ah
- By Shawcago on 04-25-16
By: George Will
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Bottom of the 33rd
- Hope and Redemption in Baseball's Longest Game
- By: Dan Barry
- Narrated by: Dan Barry
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys....
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I love baseball
- By Sher from Provo on 04-08-13
By: Dan Barry
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Pull Up a Chair
- The Vin Scully Story
- By: Curt Smith
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1950, the instantly recognizable voice of Vin Scully has invited listeners to “pull up a chair” for his peerless play-by-play sports reporting. Recruited and mentored by the legendary Red Barber, Scully has narrated NBC’s Game of the Week, twelve All-Star Games, eighteen no-hitters, and twenty-five World Series, describing players from Duke Snider to Orel Hershiser to Manny Ramirez, with hundreds in between.
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Almost perfect
- By steve finkelstein on 02-06-21
By: Curt Smith
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His Ownself
- A Semi-Memoir
- By: Dan Jenkins
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The colorful, sentimental, funny, affectionate, cantankerous memoir by the most colorful, funniest, most cantankerous-- and probably the most revered-- sportswriter of the last fifty years. Dan Jenkins is accepted as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) golf writer of all time, wrote beloved bestselling novels and abused more corporate expense accounts than anyone who ever lived. It's a touching, laugh-out-loud tribute to the romanticism of old-time sportswriting-- and the glory days of sports.
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Loved this book!
- By Flannery Abrahamson on 05-23-19
By: Dan Jenkins
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The Betrayal
- The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball
- By: Charles Fountain
- Narrated by: Bob Reed
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In the most famous scandal of sports history, eight Chicago White Sox players - including Shoeless Joe Jackson - agreed to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for the promise of $20,000 each from gamblers reportedly working for New York mobster Arnold Rothstein. Heavily favored, Chicago lost the Series five games to three. Although rumors of a fix flew while the series was being played, they were largely disregarded by players and the public at large.
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Great telling of a truly American story
- By Robert Taylor on 01-06-21
By: Charles Fountain
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Their Life's Work
- The Brotherhood of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers
- By: Gary M. Pomerantz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years. A dozen of those Steelers players, coaches, and executives have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and three decades later their names echo in popular memory: "Mean" Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mike Webster, Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, and John Stallworth.
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Great Book
- By cap on 07-18-18
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Wow! What an amazing story!
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What listeners say about The Big Fella
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hebern
- 05-26-20
Excellent portrait of the Babe
I love sports history books and with very limited live sports to watch right now it was a perfect time for it. This was the third of Jane Leavy’s books I’ve done. I also listened to her books on Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax. I think the Koufax one was the best and this one is second. This was not designed to be a traditional biography. It follows Ruth on the 1927 exhibition tour that he and Lou Gehrig did after the season. However, through giving background and following up on things it takes you through much of his life. Just don’t think it’s going to cover every season he played or detail all of his accomplishments. It also goes through events of the time and how Ruth influenced many events. It also captures Ruth as a player and a person. It even details how Christy Walsh handled Ruth’s finances and helped to make him very wealthy in an era that it was not a given for even the best players. I enjoyed the book, but Leavy approaches sports history in a scholarly fashion and that might not appeal to all. The book is very well researched. In fact the book was 23 hours long, but the last 4 hours detail her research methods and sources. I skipped over some of that, but one thing I found interesting was she said that we can expect to see more older subjects revisited in books because the research is so much easier now as more records and newspapers are archived online. Overall, I enjoyed it and the reader was a good one for the subject matter.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-10-19
nice!
Soo good and thorough!!! blown away by specifics and stats. amazing! such a good listen
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1 person found this helpful
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- D. Jacobs
- 04-07-20
A welcome book, just a little too much of a good thing.
This book wasn’t as good as “The Last Boy,” Jane Leavy’s biography of Mickey Mantel, but that was the one of the best biographies I’ve ever read of a ball player. But it was great fun and the Babe came across. My only problem was that nobody else did; the supporting characters didn’t jump off the page the way they did for Mickey. Except for Baltimore: the turn-of-the-century city of the Babe’s childhood was as richly conjured as a good character; I missed it when it faded from Babe’s story. Still, I really enjoyed this book; listening to it on my walks made them longer.
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- Jonathan Luedloff
- 10-24-21
Incredibly boring listen
She spends more time describing streets and buildings than talking about the Babe. Don’t waste a credit.
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- Grammy and PaPa
- 02-26-19
Best book on the Babe
The best book on the Babe that I have ever experienced. Fantastic insight into the the life and times of the Babe. Great detail.
I highly recommend to any baseball enthusiast.
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- Jay Quintana
- 03-19-21
Subtitle says a lot
This is not only about Babe Ruth, but about the times he lived in. The author writes with an awareness that others have written about The Babe before. And that's both good and bad. It's good because most of the things that are well known are covered quickly. We definitely don't need pages and pages of stories we've all heard before. On the other hand, some of things we may not know about -- the people in his orbit, his financial arrangements-- are covered in detail and they're just not that interesting. This is a very good book. I'm glad I listened to it. But it's not quite the classic one hoped for.
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- Isaac G.
- 07-23-23
Jane Leavy never disappoints
Koufax, Mantle, and now Ruth. Just beautiful portraits of the men and times they lived in. Hoping we’re blessed with a few more books before she hangs her hat.
This book fully lives up to its description and is chock full of new insights and stories. Thank you Jane!!
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- ALKinNYC
- 10-21-18
Babe Ruth and American History
More than a baseball biography, this is really a history of America in the 1920’s, when the Babe was its biggest celebrity. It’s a tale well-told by Jane Leavy. Each chapter relates the events around a barnstorming tour in 1927, when the Babe and Lou Gehrig played exhibition games before boisterous —and frequently rioting — fans around the country. It’s non-linear, in that chapters have subsections devoted to things like the history of commercial radio, but that’s what makes it such a good listen. For those who want to reference the extensive appendices and photos, you’d probably be better off with the hard copy or E-reader editions.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Mallard
- 02-12-19
It's Not a Typical Biography
The Big Fella is an excellent book with a lot of information and stories about the Babe that have not been included in other biographies. However, this is not a typical biography presented in chronological order from birth to death. Using the Babe's and Gehrig's 1927 barnstorming tour as an organizing theme, Leavy dives into the Babe's life off the diamond. Each stop on the tour is simply a jumping off point for stories about different aspects of the Babe's life. There is a lot of information about young Babe and how his parent's separation and mother's death affected his life. A lot of the book focuses on the cultural impact Babe had on the 1920s and 1930s and how he responded/survived the unprecedented adulation that was showered down on him. Babe's manager Christy Walsh is a major character who as the first major sports agent turned the Babe into a commodity and made him a multi-millionaire.
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5 people found this helpful
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- bryan stevenson
- 05-24-21
Too much "irrelevant" detail, for my liking.
First let me say that I'm a huge Ruth fan! I've read almost every autobiography on him that I've found. I've enjoyed them all. I've also read a few fictional books with Babe, or his character and really enjoyed them as well. This review and just my own opinion and I would still recommend this book to other Babe fans. I'm sure others may love the read. I started this with hopes it would be similar but with the length of the book figured I would get some extra content that other biographies haven't had. Well you defiantly get that. In my opinion there's just too much irrelevant content and I found my self growing bored of the book halfway through. I don't mean to knock the author as they obviously did a huge amount of research. For instance other books will tell you Babe traveled from NY to spring training. This book will tell you what train number, when it departed, what time he arrived to the train, who rode with him, what stops were made along the way, what the weather was like, so and so on. Things that I thought added to the story but after a while began to lose my interest.
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1 person found this helpful