Irvington, New York Bio Jim Reisler’s earliest baseball memory is of his father denting the furniture while demonstrating the leg-kick batting technique of New York Giant great Mel Ott. A Pittsburgh native, Reisler has written for Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The New York Daily News. He is the author of three baseball books: Black Writers/Black Baseball, Babe Ruth Slept Here, and Before They Were the Bombers, and appears on the YES Network’s new documentary History of the Yankees: Moments and Mystique. Reisler’s most recent book, Voices of the Oral Deaf, chronicles the challenges of certain members of the deaf community. He and his wife, Tobie, and daughter, Julia, live in Irvington, New York. Project Description In Launching the Legend: Babe Ruth, the 1920 Yankees, and the Team That Saved Baseball (Contemporary, Spring 2003), baseball historian Jim Reisler describes the remarkable, transforming impact Babe Ruth and the 1920 Yankees had on the game. Their brand of baseball—bludgeoning opponents with the long ball—was something never before seen, and Ruth’s record-breaking season created a level of excitement that saved the game as the Chicago Black Sox scandal threatened its very core. Not merely another biography, Launching the Legend is the story about a pivotal moment in baseball history and an era frozen in time, with Ruth, already an emerging star, on the verge of becoming a legend. It was a year when Ruth was simply a ballplayer—not yet the Ruth of myth, and certainly not the cartoonish, overweight figure of legend portrayed so inaccurately in film. As the Black Sox scandal was unfolding, Ruth generated a level of excitement that rescued the game at its darkest hour.