New Heroes: Athletes.

In his 1921 novel Three Soldiers, John Dos Passos described soldiers wounded in World War I as "discarded automatons, broken toys laid away in rows." World War I was a war without heroes, and veterans returned to America disillusioned and cynical. They searched at home for new male heroes and affirmations of manhood. Some men gave hero status to athletes, and popular excitement over spectator sports became intense. The 1920s have been called the "Golden Age of Sport," when athletics were "seated on the American throne." Baseball was the national pastime, but football nearly "became a national religion." One found "real men" on the gridiron and the diamond: the Sultan of Swat (Babe Ruth), the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame (Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden), the Galloping Ghost (Red Grange). A journalist for Collier's...