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Everything he did in those days, from smoking cigars to
smoking fastballs, smacked of hyperbole. He ate too much.
He drank too much. He womanized to a fare-thee-well. And
when he hit yet another of his titanic shots, the reporters
covering his games
wrote the prose of excess, as if nothing less could do justice
to his swats. In journalism this was the age of
alliteration. The Babe's homers were described variously as
"the wicked wallop" and "soaring
socks." Ruth and teammate Lou Gehrig were routinely
called "the Babe and the Buster." Even Ruth
caught the alliterative fever. He had three favorite bats
in 1927: Black Betsy, the Titian-colored Beautiful Bella
and the ash-blonde Big
Bertha. |
photo by Transcendental Graphics
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