Author Tony Castro's Gehrig & The Babe: The Friendship and The Feud profiles the lives of baseball legends Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth against the backdrop of post-World War I, the Roaring Twenties and the Depression.
The book, due out in April from Triumph Books, is being highly acclaimed in pre-publication reviews. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ira Berkow said of Gehrig & The Babe: "Gracefully written, deeply researched, full of passion, insights and surprising twists. A triumph."
He was interviewed by Ashley Chase.
How did you come up with the idea for Gehrig & The Babe, and why did you decide to focus on their feud?
My late friend and agent Mike Hamilburg loved to say that every book has its own godfather. In the case of Gehrig & The Babe, there were two. My longtime writer pal Dave Thomas used to spend too much time for his own good on the basketball courts and at Los Angeles Lakers games. Like a lot of Lakers fans, for years he lamented the feud between stars Kobie Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal that broke apart their brief dynasty, possibly while they still had a few more NBA championships in their future. I had just written Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son, and one day Dave pulls me aside and says: “Kobie and Shaq were the modern day Ruth and Gehrig. Their feud ruined those great Yankee team of that era, and who knows how many more pennants and World Series championship they could have won.”
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