Media and the Creation of Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth is among the most lasting of American icons. A baseball player who emerged from the sports pages of the Jazz Age, he has become one of the dominant symbols of traditional cultural values, nationalism, and masculine identity. His is a media persona that has changed drastically over the years and is one that allows each new generation of people discovering him to take what they need from the stories of the Babe and reinvent them for their own uses. Patrick Adam Trimble carefully unpacks Ruth s legacy, examining how mass communications, with the assistance of the political and economic systems that rely on that media, help to shape the evolution of Babe Ruth from his creation as a media icon in the 1920s to his continuing presence in the new millennium.

Patrick Adam Trimble is an Instructor in Integrative Arts at Penn State University.