Tony Castro's America

'Gehrig & Ruth': Behind the Pages

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig barnstorming in Waco, Texas, 1929 (author's personal collection)

 

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.”

Evening in Paris!

A little walk near our apartment. Arche de Triomphe in the distance. Just don't get anything close to this in LA. At Place de la Concorde.

Visiting With Napoleon at Versailles

Although Napoleon is prominently featured at the Palace of Versailles, he did not reside in the château. But the apartments were arranged and decorated for the use of the empress Marie-Louise. Versailles also features The Coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame, famous painting by  Jacques-Louis David.

Napoleon & The Christ

“Almost since the beginning of time, armies had marched into war bearing symbols of protection from higher powers. Plutarch wrote that in leading his troops Alexander the Great would shift “his lance into his left hand, and with his right appealed to the gods… praying (to) them, if he was really sprung from Zeus, to defend and strengthen the Greeks.” In Biblical times, the high priest Aaron served as a religious figure who traveled together with the military. In feudal Europe, armies carried papal flags to show that their campaigns had the blessing of the church. So, too, Napoleon in his first presiding military assignment to Italy had ignored orders from the French Revolution’s ruling Directory to dethrone Pope Pius VI and shutter the church. Instead Napoleon outfitted each of his regiments with imperial standards that had been blessed by the pope.”

From Napoleon and The Christ, due out in 2019 in the U.S. and France, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s birth.

DID NAPOLEON UNVEIL an astonishing truth concealed for centuries? When Napoleon came to power he had the Musée du Louvre, located on Paris’ Right Bank, renamed in his honor — and soon the Musée Napoleon was overflowing with the artistic spoils of war as Bonaparte’s Grand Army swept across the continent. Among the cultural artifacts that made their way to Paris were hundreds of paintings and sculptures, including every image Napoleon could find of Jesus Christ,as well as the sacred relics from the crucifixion. Why? Why this obsession from the conqueror who had fought endlessly with Pope Pius VII who ultimately excommunicated him? What did Napoleon know that had eluded everyone else for over seventeen centuries?

 

'Gehrig & The Babe' No. 1 New Release

Babe Ruth never fails to sell. Thanks to advance sales, 'Gehrig & The Babe' is already No. 1 in Amazon New Releases. Pub date is April.
https://www.amazon.com/Gehrig-Babe-Friendship-Tony-Castro/dp/162937251X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Napoleon Book Deal Done!

Part of my Christmas came early. We just finalized the deal on my Napoleon biography, working title 'Napoleon and The Shroud,' to be published by Lyons Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. http://NapoleonTheChrist.com

When We All Wanted To Be Hemingway

 

A CHILD OF THE boomer generation, I grew up in the 1950s desperately wanting to be Ernest Hemingway. To run with the bulls in Pamplona. To hunt big game in Africa. To roam the streets of Paris with the Lost Generation. To live the adventurous life of Nick Adams. Years later, I would learn that I was hardly alone among young people of my age. We all wanted to be Ernest Hemingway.

Today, those of us who have survived can take great pride. We are Hemingway.

Sadly, though, we likely are the Ernest Hemingway that I’ve written about in my new book, Looking for Hemingway: Spain, The Bullfights, and A Final Rite of Passage. It is the Hemingway at that age we all dread of being: Old, losing our train of thought, unable to do what once came so easily, too quick to show our frustration at our slowness but still holding on to the hope of one last glimmer of youth.

I recently read a quote – I can’t recall by whom (that thing about losing our train of thought perhaps) – that you can’t really face getting old without having the courage for it. And I thought that was such a Hemingwayesque thing to say: grace under pressure and that whole Hemingway credo about life.

And there was another quote, this one from Dame Muriel Spark, the Scottish novelist, that “being over 70 is like being engaged in a war — all our friends are going or gone, and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.”

Ernest Hemingway undoubtedly would have loved all that talk about war, the dead and those dying on a battlefield.

The Last Homecoming Queen

 

Clare Wood, 1952-2017

One of my oldest, dearest friends, Clare Wood was a cheerleader who had just been crowned Miss 'Roo, homecoming queen of the Killeen (Texas) High School Kangaroos, when I wrote a column about her and her family's friendship with legendary Texas Longhorns football coach Darrell Royal.

She would go on to attend the University of Texas and became a permanent resident of her beloved Austin.

Rest in peace, Clare.

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