BABE RUTH: Against All Odds, World’s Mightiest Slugger
Bill Jenkinson
Author Bio
Bill Jenkinson is one of the country’s most trusted and respected baseball historians. He has served as either official or de facto consultant for The Baseball Hall of Fame, Major League Baseball, SABR, The Babe Ruth Museum and ESPN. Jenkinson has personally interviewed almost every top slugger from the 20th and 21st Centuries, including Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, and Mark McGwire.
With the publication of his 2007 book, The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs, Bill established himself as the nation’s pre-eminent Ruthian scholar. In 2008, he had the honor of delivering the 60th-Anniversay eulogy for Babe Ruth at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Jenkinson’s second book, BASEBALL’S ULTIMATE POWER, was published in 2010. It tells the compelling story of epic power-hitting throughout the history of baseball, and discusses every great slugger on an individual basis. Among baseball historians, only Bill Jenkinson is qualified to address this topic in definitive fashion.
In 2011-2012, Jenkinson served as the primary baseball consultant for Hot Springs, Arkansas when that historic city established its nationally recognized “Historical Baseball Trail.” Then, in 2014, Bill published his first e-book. It is titled BABE RUTH: Against All Odds, World’s Mightiest Slugger.
Description
To honor the 100th Anniversary of Babe Ruth’s entry into professional baseball, America’s leading Ruthian scholar has written this definitive book, which conclusively proves Babe’s historic superiority over all other sluggers.
Based on thirty-five years of intensive research, this chronicle banishes, once and for all, the false caricatures and lingering misconceptions about Ruth’s abilities and persona. In their place, we finally receive the compelling truth about who The Babe really was: a man of energy, passion, warmth, generosity, dedication, courage, human foibles, and, most importantly to this story, nearly super-human physical power.
It was that final trait which set Ruth apart from all other men. Babe’s home runs soared into the heavens, farther than anyone had imagined possible, and filled a nation with joy, wonder, and hope. Here is a captivating account of Ruth’s amazing transcendence, told through the prism of his mightiest home runs and irrepressible spirit.
Book excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
The Premise
When I published my first book in 2007 (The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs-Carroll & Graf, New York), I knew that there would be some resistance to some of my conclusions. Nobody needed me to tell them that Babe Ruth was a transcendent figure in the history of sports, or that he was an extraordinarily talented baseball player. As such a truly iconic part of American culture, he was known to almost everyone, even those usually uninterested in sports.
But, my book was different. After twenty-eight years of intensive research, I decided to push the limits of normal expectation beyond anything previously perceived. I dared to tell folks that Ruth had been even greater than they had thought. I asserted that Babe wasn’t simply the best baseball player ever, he was better than that. According to my findings, he was so much better than everyone else that there really wasn’t much point in even looking for comparisons. That was saying a lot, and I knew it.
Just for starters, common sense argues against such apparent hyperbole. Whenever you evaluate a large number of performers, it is almost always difficult to single out the best. When you focus on the sport of baseball (America’s National Pastime), you’re talking about an endeavor which has been tried by literally millions of able-bodied men (& women). In such a large base group, even if you’re fortunate enough to identify the single best, the incremental difference between that single best and the next best is bound to be extremely small. Right? Well, not always. At least, that was my conviction. Due to my decades of research into the career of Babe Ruth, I was certain that I had found the exception. In fact, I still do.
Author Website
http://billjenkinsonbaseball.webs.com/
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BABE RUTH: Against All Odds, World’s Mightiest Slugger