Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox is the first complete account of Boston's fifth World Series championship. The year is famous, but most fans know very little about the season. During that tumultuous summer, the Great War in Europe cast an ominous shadow over the national game, as enlistments and the draft wreaked havoc with every team's roster. Players and owners fought bitterly over contracts and revenue, the parks were infested with gamblers, and the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs almost called off the World Series. And a Boston player known as The Colossus -- 23-year-old Babe Ruth -- began his historic transformation from pitching ace to the game's greatest slugger. Wood also poses a chilling question: Was the 1918 World Series fixed? Sports Illustrated called the book "an entertaining and exhaustive account of a tumultuous season" and Robert W. Creamer, author of the definitive biography of Ruth, said "Mr. Wood has lit upon one of the most turbulent and important and at the same time least known years in baseball history. He has done remarkable, revelatory research, and he has a clean, clear way of writing."

A "marvelous" (Sports Illustrated) portrait of the three men whose lives were forever changed by WWI-era Boston and the Spanish flu: baseball star Babe Ruth, symphony conductor Karl Muck, and Harvard law student Charles Whittlesey. In the fall of 1918, a fever gripped Boston. The streets emptied as paranoia about the deadly Spanish flu spread. Newspapermen and vigilante investigators aggressively sought to discredit anyone who looked or sounded German. And as the war raged on, the enemy seemed to be lurking everywhere: prowling in submarines off the coast of Cape Cod, arriving on passenger ships in the harbor, or disguised as the radicals lecturing workers about the injustice of a sixty-hour workweek. War Fever explores this delirious moment in American history through the stories of three men: Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, accused of being an enemy spy; Charles Whittlesey, a Harvard law graduate who became an unlikely hero in Europe; and the most famous baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth, poised to revolutionize the game he loved. Together, they offer a gripping narrative of America at war and American culture in upheaval.

Before 1918, the Boston Red Sox were unstoppable. They won World Series after World Series, thanks in part to their charismatic pitcher-slugger Babe Ruth. But some people on the Red Sox felt the Babe was more trouble than he was worth, and he was traded away to one of the worst teams in baseball, the New York Yankees. From then on, the Yankees became a golden team. And the Red Sox? For over 80 years, they just couldn’t win another World Series. Then, in 2004, along came a scruffy, scrappy Red Sox team. Could they break Babe Ruth’s curse and win it all?

Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox is the first complete account of Boston's fifth World Series championship. The year is famous, but most fans know very little about the season. During that tumultuous summer, the Great War in Europe cast an ominous shadow over the national game, as enlistments and the draft wreaked havoc with every team's roster. Players and owners fought bitterly over contracts and revenue, the parks were infested with gamblers, and the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs almost called off the World Series. And a Boston player known as The Colossus -- 23-year-old Babe Ruth -- began his historic transformation from pitching ace to the game's greatest slugger. Wood also poses a chilling question: Was the 1918 World Series fixed? Sports Illustrated called the book "an entertaining and exhaustive account of a tumultuous season" and Robert W. Creamer, author of the definitive biography of Ruth, said "Mr. Wood has lit upon one of the most turbulent and important and at the same time least known years in baseball history. He has done remarkable, revelatory research, and he has a clean, clear way of writing."

IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF EIGHT MEN OUT . . . the untold story of baseball’s ORIGINAL SCANDAL Did the Chicago Cubs throw the World Series in 1918—and get away with it? Who were the players involved—and why did they do it? Were gambling and corruption more widespread across the leagues than previously believed? Were the players and teams “cursed” by their actions? Finally, is it time to rewrite baseball history? With exclusive access to surprising new evidence, Sporting News reporter Sean Deveney details a scandal at the core of baseball’s greatest folklore—in a golden era as exciting and controversial as our sports world today. This inside look at the pivotal year of 1918 proves that baseball has always been a game overrun with colorful characters, intense human drama, and explosive controversy. "The Original Curse is not just about baseball. It is a sweeping portrait of America at war in 1918. . . . In the end, the proper question is not, ‘How could a player from that era fix the World Series?’ It’s, ‘How could he not?’” —Ken Rosenthal, FOX Sports, from the Introduction "Sean Deveney plays connect-the-dots in this intriguing account of a possible conspiracy to throw the 1918 World Series. Thoroughly researched and well written, The Original Curse is a must-read for baseball fans and anyone who loves a good mystery. Is Max Flack the Shoeless Joe of the 1918 Cubs? Deveney lays out the case and let's readers decide if the fix was in." —Paul Sullivan, Cubs beat writer, Chicago Tribune "This book gives the reader a fun and honest look at baseball as it used to be-- the good guys, the gamblers, the cheaters, the drunks, the inept leaders. But, more than that, it puts those characters into the context of Chicago, Boston and America at the time of World War I, and you wind up with a unique way to explain the motivations of those characters." —David Kaplan, host, Chicago Tribune Live and WGN's Sports Central “Deveney’s painstaking study of the 1918 World Series between the Cubs and Red Sox argues that the Black Sox scandal was not an aberration and might have had an antecedent. Deveney’s scholarship does not detract from his ability to spin a good tale: his tendency to imagine players’ conversations will remind readers of Leigh Montville’s The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth.... A welcome companion to Susan Dellinger’s Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series, Deveney’s book contributes greatly to our understanding of this decisive period in baseball and American morals." —Library Journal

WINNER of the Society for American Baseball Research's (SABR) 2017 Larry Ritter Awardfor best baseball book of the Deadball Era The complete story surrounding the most famous and significant player transaction in professional sports The sale of Babe Ruth by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees in 1919 is one of the pivotal moments in baseball history, changing the fortunes of two of baseball's most storied franchises, and helping to create the legend of the greatest player the game has ever known. More than a simple transaction, the sale resulted in a deal that created the Yankee dynasty, turned Boston into an also-ran, helped save baseball after the Black Sox scandal and led the public to fall in love with Ruth. Award-winning baseball historian Glenn Stout reveals brand-new information about Babe and the unique political situation surrounding his sale, including: -Prohibition and the lifting of Blue Laws in New York affected Yankees owner and beer baron Jacob Ruppert -Previously unexplored documents reveal that the mortgage of Fenway Park did not factor into the Ruth sale - Ruth's disruptive influence on the Red Sox in 1918 and 1919, including sabermetrics showing his negative impact on the team as he went from pitcher to outfielder The Selling of the Babe is the first book to focus on the ramifications of the sale and captures the central moment of Ruth's evolution from player to icon, and will appeal to fans of The Kid and Pinstripe Empire. Babe's sale to New York and the subsequent selling of Ruth to America led baseball from the Deadball Era and sparked a new era in the game, one revolved around the long ball and one man, The Babe.

One hundred years ago, in September 1918, three things came to Boston: war, plague, and the World Series. This is the unimaginable story of that late summer month, in which a division of Massachusetts militia volunteers led the first unified American fighting force into battle in France, turning the tide of World War I. Meanwhile the world’s deadliest pandemic—the Spanish Flu—erupted in Boston and its suburbs, bringing death on a terrifying scale first to military facilities and then to the civilian population. At precisely the same time, in a baseball season cut short on the homefront and amidst the surrounding ravages of death, a young pitcher named Babe Ruth rallied the sport’s most dominant team, the Boston Red Sox, to a World Series victory—the last World Series victory the Sox would see for 86 years. In September 1918: War, Plague and the World Series, the riveting, intertwined stories of this remarkable month introduce readers to a richly diverse cast of characters: David Putnam, a Boston teenager and America’s World War I Flying Ace; a transcendent Babe Ruth and his teammates, battling greedy owners and a hostile public; entire families from all social strata, devastated by sudden and horrifying influenza death; unknown political functionary Calvin Coolidge, thrust into managing the country’s first great public health crisis by an absentee governor; and New England’s soldiers, enduring trench warfare and poisonous gas to drive back German forces. At the same time, other stories were also unfolding: Cambridge high school football star Charlie Crowley, a college freshman teamed up with stars Curly Lambeau and George Gipp under a first-time coach named Knute Rockne; Boston suffrage leader Maud Wood Park was fighting for women’s right to vote, even as they flexed their developing political muscle; poet E.E. Cummings, an Army private found himself stationed at the center of a biological storm; and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge maneuvered as the constant rival of a sitting wartime president. In the tradition of Erick Larsen's bestselling Devil in the White City, September 1918 is a haunting three-dimensional recreation of a moment in history almost too cinematic to be real.

National Bestseller He was the Sultan of Swat. The Caliph of Clout. The Wizard of Whack. The Bambino. And simply, to his teammates, the Big Bam. Babe Ruth was more than baseball’s original superstar. For eighty-five years, he has remained the sport’s reigning titan. He has been named Athlete of the Century . . . more than once. But who was this large, loud, enigmatic man? Why is so little known about his childhood, his private life, and his inner thoughts? In The Big Bam, Leigh Montville, whose recent New York Times bestselling biography of Ted Williams garnered glowing reviews and offered an exceptionally intimate look at Williams’s life, brings his trademark touch to this groundbreaking, revelatory portrait of the Babe. From the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Ted Williams comes the thoroughly original, definitively ambitious, and exhilaratingly colorful biography of the largest legend ever to loom in baseball—and in the history of organized sports. Based on newly discovered documents and interviews—including pages from Ruth’s personal scrapbooks —The Big Bam traces Ruth’s life from his bleak childhood in Baltimore to his brash entrance into professional baseball, from Boston to New York and into the record books as the world’s most explosive slugger and cultural luminary.

A Country Doctor and Ex-Ballplayer Save "The Bambino" from Thugs, the Baseball Commissioner, and Himself in the Historical Fiction Novel, The Babe Ruth Conspiracy, from Author David O. Stewart --New York City, 1920-21-- In 1920, Babe Ruth--larger than life on the ball field and off--is enjoying a record-breaking season in his first year as a New York Yankee when his 1918 World Series win falls under suspicion of being "fixed." Then rumors start that his silent movie, Headin' Home, was bankrolled by the top aide to gambling kingpin, Arnold Rothstein. Ruth turns to Speed Cook--a professional ballplayer before the game was segregated and who now promotes Negro baseball--for help. If anyone knows the dirty underbelly of America's favorite pastime, it's Cook. Cook enlists the help of a long-time friend, Dr. Jamie Fraser, whose new wife, Eliza, coproduced the Babe's silent film. While Cook, Fraser, and Eliza dig for the truth, protecting the oftentimes-reckless Ruth from thugs and the new baseball commissioner proves even more dangerous when they come face-to-face with hidden power-hitters who are playing for keeps. Publisher's Note: The Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery Series will be enjoyed by fans of American history and period mystery novels. Free of graphic sex and with some mild profanity, this series can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. "Within these pages, he ushers us into the randy, gritty, wanton world of Babe Ruth, just arrived in New York from Boston, where he would power the Yankees—hell, the whole damn city—for the next decade. It is a world filled with molls and toughs, crooked pols and bootleggers, gamblers and righteous cops, not to mention Stewart’s beloved characters, Speed Cook, the wise head and former Negro Leaguer, and Dr. Jamie Fraser, who have teamed up before in previous fictions. The texture of the city is rendered with precision and believability. When Stewart describes the new impediment at the corner of 42nd and Fifth Avenue, the city’s first traffic tower, a reader can see the snarl of horse-drawn wagons, bicycles, pedestrians and oh so many automobiles—“machines” in the argot of the Twenties--clogging the street. Even the Babe had to stop for that. The book is full of such knowing details like the Thomas splint, an invention of World War I medicine, that saves Jamie Fraser’s daughter from losing her leg. Larger-than-life Ruth is made palpable through a mosaic of small but unassailable images. Ruth, resplendent in a red satin dressing gown worn over a pair of green and white diamond pajamas, earns “a low whistle” from Cook when he is admitted to the Babe’s sumptuous apartment in the Ansonia Hotel. It earns something more important from the reader: a belief in narrative plausibility and in the characters that inhabit it. So, when Stewart writes of the Babe that getting angry at him was a waste of time, “like losing your temper at a thunderstorm,” you know he knows what he’s talking about. The book is grand. Just like the Babe." ~Jane Leavy, Author of The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created The Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery Series The Lincoln Deception The Paris Deception The Babe Ruth Deception

"An biography of perhaps the most significant and controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb, drawing in part on newly discovered letters and documents"--