Gift of the Bambino — Jerry Amernic

It is 1914. A young boy takes in a baseball game with his father and sees a tall, lanky Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional. The ball sails through the sky and drops into the bay just beyond the fence. Thus begins an epic tale of hopes, dreams, and fantasy that the boy takes with him on the journey of his life. He shares it with no one as he toils through triumph and tragedy, and not until he finally confides in his own grandson some two generations later is his struggle vindicated.

In Gift of the Bambino, that grandson's coming-of-age as a young man and his grandfather's worshipping of Babe Ruth when he himself was a boy are woven together in a web of fantasy, ambition, and unswerving belief in an ideal. The poignant relationship they share culminates in a mutual acceptance of morality and the realization that myth and reality are intertwined. And when death is at the door, past and present meet in a dramatic rendezvous with the mystical home run ball from 1914.

Gift of the Bambino is a baseball novel that tugs fiercely at the heart and refuses to let go. It looks back into the early days of baseball, when the game was just a game and the thrills of a home-run everlasting.