Last week, I sent Robert Creamer an email.
I am working on a project on Babe Ruth. Nobody knew more about Ruth than Creamer. One of the original founders of Sports Illustrated, he wrote the definitive biography on the legend: Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. The 1974 book is generally acclaimed to be the best sports biography of all time.
I got Creamer’s address and asked if I could drop him some questions. I was told by somebody close to him that Creamer “still had his fastball.”
Among other things, I really wanted to know what it was like to be 12-years-old and get a chance to see the great Bambino stride to the plate in Yankee Stadium. Imagine that.
Sadly, I’ll never get my answer from Creamer. He died yesterday at the age of 90.
From the New York Times obituary:
Mr. Creamer’s book on Ruth, “Babe: The Legend Comes to Life” — which came out in 1974, the year Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s career home run record — was infused with details, including Ruth’s pregame meal: three hot dogs. Roger Angell, writing in The New Yorker, said Ruth had “at last found the biographer he deserves in Robert Creamer,” describing his writing as “swift and clear and stamped with a confirming intelligence.”
In 1984, Mr. Creamer (pronounced kreemer) followed up with “Stengel: His Life and Times,” a comprehensive look at the baseball legend who played for or managed all four major league teams from New York City. Mr. Creamer presented Stengel, who was often portrayed as an idiot savant, as a nuanced personality of wit and intelligence. But he did not neglect the “old perfessor’s” knack for squeezing new possibilities out of the English language in a personalized dialect called Stengelese. One gem Mr. Creamer chose: “There comes a time in every man’s life at least once, and I’ve had plenty of them.”
Jonathan Yardley, writing in The Washington Post Book World, said the Stengel book was the second-best American sports biography. The best, he said, was the Ruth book.
Walter Bingham of Sports Illustrated notes Creamer’s name has been on SI’s masthead for every issue since its debut in 1954. He writes:
As an editor, he was not unlike an avuncular college professor. He would show you his edited version of your story and patiently point out why he had made every change. For a young writer, it was an advanced course in journalism. Remarkably, on points of dispute, he would not hesitate to yield if he felt that perhaps he had been hasty.
They don’t make them like that anymore.
Jack McCallum, one of those writers who worked with Creamer, recalled the impact he had on him. He writes:
Robert Creamer was one of those gentle giants in the world of journalism, not because of his size (though he was tall) but because he made a difference without ever calling attention to himself. Without Bob, chances are I would’ve remained toiling in obscurity, never getting the chance to work at one of the great magazines of the world. I’m not suggesting that would’ve been a loss for journalism, but it sure as hell would’ve been a loss for me.