Matt Tavares s striking homage to one of baseball s legends offers a rare view into Babe Ruth s formative years in "the House that built Ruth."
Before he is known as the Babe, George Herman Ruth is just a boy who lives in Baltimore and gets into a lot of trouble. But when he turns seven, his father brings him to the gates of Saint Mary s Industrial School for Boys, and his life is changed forever. At Saint Mary s, he s expected to study hard and follow a lot of rules. But there is one good thing about Saint Mary s: almost every day, George gets to play baseball. Here, under the...

The love between brothers is key to Matt Tavares's tale of Dominican pitcher Pedro Martinez, from his days of throwing rocks at mangoes to his years as a major-league star.

Before Pedro Martinez pitched the Red Sox to a World Series championship, before he was named to the All-Star team eight times, before he won the Cy Young three times, he was a kid from a place called Manoguayabo in the Dominican Republic. Pedro loved baseball more than anything, and his older brother Ramon was the best pitcher he'd ever seen. He'd dream of the day he and his brother could play together in the...