He lived in the present tense—in the camera’s lens. There was no frame he couldn’t or wouldn’t fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Babe Ruth expanded notions of the possible. Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh, Ruth drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom.

His was a life of journeys and itineraries—from Baltimore to Boston to New York, and back to Boston at the end of his career. There were road trips and hunting trips; grand tours of foreign capitals and postseason promotional tours, not to mention those 714 trips around the bases. And finally—after hitting his 60th home run in September 1927—the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig.

In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times. Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.