What happens
Grantland Rice, sports writer, recalls his early encounters with the young Boston Red Sox pitcher and slugger George Herman Babe Ruth. In spring 1919 at Tampa, Florida, Rice watches Ruth hit batting practice drives and hears manager Ed Barrow describe the player's value to baseball. Rice then recounts the sale of Ruth to Colonel Jake Rupert, Ruth's enormous popularity with crowds and children, and several anecdotes from their time together, including a radio broadcast mishap and a dinner party in St. Petersburg, Florida. The episode is the second chapter of the series, drawn from Rice's account of his life in sports and told in the first person.
Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, spring training; New York; Chicago; the 1920s and 1930s era of American baseball
Characters: Grantland Rice, Jimmy Powers, Babe Ruth, Ed Barrow, Colonel Jake Rupert, Graham McNamee, Mrs. Lipman, Walter Lipman
Listen for: Rice's first sight of Babe Ruth's batting practice in Tampa in 1919, and the St. Petersburg dinner party where Ruth describes his 1932 World Series home run
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.