The first Yankees championship and the redemption of 1923: "The House That Ruth Built" by Rob Weintraub

Jeff Glor talks to Rob Weintraub about his new book, "The House That Ruth Built."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Robert Weintraub: One day, baseball nerd that I am, I was perusing my copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia, looking at the history of the World Series. I noticed that the New York Yankees and New York Giants had played three consecutive times in the early-1920s, and that the games represented a collision in styles between the dead ball "Scientific" style of John McGraw's Giants and the power game personified by Babe Ruth. That intrigued me, and I as I researched further, I realized that the Giants won the first two, and the Yankees flipped the script by capturing the 1923 Series, which was a) the very first title of 27 in Yankees history, and b) the first year of Yankee Stadium, which was built because the Giants kicked the Yanks out of the Polo Grounds, which the teams shared. That's an amazing story, and I felt compelled to write about it.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RW: Foremost would be the fact that Babe Ruth's career as a Yankee slugger was marked by an incredible failure in the 1922 World Series against the Yankees' bitter rivals, the New York Giants. We take for granted today that Ruth had nothing but unchecked glory in the field, but actually the Babe was humiliated on the biggest stage (making him something of an A-Rod of the Prohibition Era), and the press lambasted him for the failure, to the point where a good many speculated that he was finished as a great player. It sounds absurd in retrospect, but that was the feeling at the time. Ruth then embarked on a campaign of redemption that included a vigorous offseason regimen at his secluded farm in Massachusetts, and wreaked vengeance during the 1923 season, winning his only MVP Award and dominating the World Series, paying back the Giants and their manager John McGraw with a then-record three homers in the Fall Classic, as the Yanks captured their first championship in franchise history.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RW: Probably producing your show! I have been a television producer for many years, and only recently switched my main gig to writing. I concentrate on sports, however, and I'm not great first thing in the morning, so perhaps I'd be better off leaving the Early Show in the capable hands of your current producers.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RW: I somehow managed to read the latter two volumes of Edmund Morris' biography of Teddy Roosevelt without reading the Pulitzer-winning first part, "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt." I am erasing that mistake now, and I can already say it is the best of the three. I'm also in the middle of "Nixonland," by Rick Perlstein, "The Angels' Game," by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and "The Bedwetter," by the beautiful and talented Sarah Silverman.

JG: What's next for you?

RW: I am in the midst of a couple of potential projects I cannot really divulge as yet. Meanwhile, I am working on the upcoming Football Outsiders Almanac 2011, a pigskin annual to which I contribute (fingers crossed for an end to the lockout), writing and producing Run It Back Sunday, an NBA show airing on Turner and Cartoon Network, and helping to care for my three-year old daughter and 20-month old son, Phoebe and Marty. That makes writing a book seem like, um, child's play.

For more on "The House That Ruth Built," visit the Hachette Book Group website.