- Are Ruth and Gehrig the greatest 1-2 punch in sports history?
Yes, though for one season alone, I would take Mantle and Maris.
- How would you describe their relationship?
Amenable until Gehrig’s relationship with Eleanor took hold and Ruth settled into his marriage with Claire and his new family life. Lou’s mom Christina Gehrig became emotionally unglued, fearing she had lost her son to the influence of another woman and also lost Babe as a kind of second son. (Ruth used to dine often at Christina’s home where Lou lived until his marriage. Babe’s visits to Christina’s house dramatically dropped after 1929 when he married Claire.) Eventually Christina’s attempts to break up Lou and Eleanor led to an estrangement with her son. Similarly, Christina’s public disparagement of Claire – even at Yankee Stadium infuriated Ruth and triggered the feud between Babe and Lou.
- Gehrig and Ruth today. How would they handle the social media circus?
Ruth would be in his element, dwarfing even Trump as a Twitter hog.
Gehrig would have used social media to gently threaten going into the free-agency market to get the pay raise he couldn’t get in his day.
- 1927 Yanks. Best of all-time?
Right now, as author of Gehrig & The Babe, I have to way yes. But I think I would bet my house any day on the 1961 Yankees – a better team up and down the lineup, so long as Mantle was healthy and Whitey was on the mound.
- One word to describe Babe Ruth.
Glorious.
- Thoughts on this year’s Yanks?
I like this team, even with a starting rotation that will need a lot of Hail Marys, rosaries and prayers from the Siddur. If they can get past the Astros to win the American League pennant, they will beat the Dodgers in a great world series.
- What do you hope people say about the book when they’re done reading it?
How many more World Series championships could those Yankee teams have won if Babe and Gehrig hadn’t been the Shaq and Kobe of their day?
- When did you decide you wanted to be an author?
Possibly in the third grade when I wrote a 20-page report on Davy Crockett and a 40-page paper on Abraham Lincoln.
- Are the Yankees even half the Yankees today without Ruth and Gehrig?
Yes. For all its legendary glory, that Yankee dynasty wasn’t the greatest. Consider that in their time together Ruth and Gehrig won only three World Series championships. In six of their other seven years as teammates, they didn’t even win the American League pennant. More recently, Jeter’s Yankees won five World Series titles. Reggie’s teams won two. Mantle’s Yankees seven. You’ve got to believe that the Aaron Judge-era Yanks have at least two or three titles in them.
- What would these two legends say about the game today?
Babe probably would have cracked that all these bearded players on opposing rosters made him feel like he was barnstorming against the old House of David team. Gehrig likely would say that if they’d had the designated hitter rule in his day, he might have rested occasionally as the DH – and his extended streak might never have been broken.
