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My New Book:

Framing the Babe

A historical mystery of baseball, candy, and murder

I’m very happy to announce that my new book, Framing the Babe: A historical mystery of baseball, candy and murder, is now live on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle ebook editions. As the subtitle describes, this is a fictional murder mystery centering around the Curtiss Candy Company’s theft of the Babe’s name for use on the Baby Ruth Candy bar.

But it’s much more than that. You’ll learn about Babe’s dysfunctional early childhood, his youth spent at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, his rise as a young baseball star, and his blossoming into one of the greatest sports figures this country has ever produced. Along the way, you’ll learn much about America as it existed in the 1920s.

As some of you may be aware, Otto Schnering, owner of the Curtiss Candy Company, made many millions of dollars in the 1920s in what I describe as one of the greatest marketing heists in history. To avoid paying Babe royalties, he claimed he named the candy bar not after Babe Ruth, but after “Baby Ruth” Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. The only problem was that the little girl died in 1904, seventeen years before the Baby Ruth candy bar appeared in 1921.

Needless to say, no one was buying this cockamamie story. The irony is that from the item most closely associated with him, the Baby Ruth candy bar, Babe made not a cent. Over the many decades since the candy bar debuted, it’s no exaggeration to say that billions have been made off of Babe’s name, as it is still being marketed to this day.

Anyway, I was always fascinated by this story, and so I let my imagination run wild with it, and the result is my murder-mystery novel, Framing the Babe. Without giving away too much, the story involves a murder in which, as the title suggests, the Babe is framed for it. Many familiar characters make appearances, including the imposing Xaverian brother, Brother Mathias, Babe’s mentor and father figure at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, who plays a major role, as does Claire Hodgson, Babe’s future second wife. I created a Perry Mason-styled lawyer named Sam Harding who eventually unravels the mystery.

Here are a few excerpts from the book’s Introduction:

Babe Ruth could be generous and selfish, charming and difficult, disciplined on the baseball field and anything but disciplined away from it. He loved children and rarely forgot the institution where he had spent much of his own childhood. He made mistakes, plenty of them—but somehow the public continued to embrace him. This novel gave me the opportunity to take those real people, places, and events and ask a question history never had to answer.

What would have happened if, at the height of his fame, Babe Ruth had been accused of murder?

Imagine his anger. A company had taken a name that appeared to be unmistakably connected to him and turned it into one of the most successful candy bars in America. Millions of Baby Ruth bars were being sold, fortunes were being made, and the man whose name appeared to be responsible for much of that success received nothing.

Could that kind of anger cause even an ordinary man to contemplate murder? And in the case of Babe Ruth—a man famous not only for his home runs but also for his enormous personality and sometimes explosive temper—could it provide a believable motive?

More importantly, could someone else make it appear that it did? What if the very things that had made Babe Ruth famous—his personality, his temper, his public dispute over the Baby Ruth candy bar, and even his baseball past—could be turned against him and used to make an innocent man appear guilty?

That’s where history ends, and our mystery begins.

If you like fast-moving murder mysteries with many unexpected twists and turns and a final dramatic courtroom scene, I think you’ll enjoy Framing the Babe. And for those of you who, like me, can never get enough of the great Bambino, this book will be right up your alley.

Gary Livacari