We begin our discussion of baseball greatness by considering Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose career record should speak for itself. Stowe is the author of the abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the bestselling American book of the entire nineteenth century and probably the most read work of American literature ever. It's also the book that the phrase “the great American novel” was invented to describe. Yet despite Stowe's overwhelming popularity and immense influence in her time and beyond it, literary arbiters – critics and scholars – didn't respect her work, so she was read in few American literature classrooms until a generation ago. Simply put, her work wasn't considered worthy of inclusion in the American literary canon, not considered sufficiently “great” to assign to the nation's youth.

Babe Ruth never had this problem. The most famous baseball player in history, Ruth has been the very measure of greatness in baseball, and also in other sports. Even a contemporary giant like Michael Jordan has often been called the “Babe Ruth of basketball.” Ruth was canonized from the start, and even though all of his most famous records have been broken, his iconic status has never been threatened.