Robert W. Creamer | Sports biographer, 90

Robert W. Creamer, 90, a sportswriter whose richly researched biographies of Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel are considered two of the finest books ever written about baseball, died July 18 at a nursing home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He had prostate cancer, said his son, Tom Creamer.

Mr. Creamer was in his 30s when he joined Sports Illustrated as a charter member of the magazine's staff in 1954. His name remains on the magazine's masthead 58 years later as a special contributor.

He wrote about horse racing and track and field, and he worked as an editor, but he was best known as a baseball writer.

In Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, Mr. Creamer sorted the facts of Ruth's life from the many myths around him. When it was published in 1974, the book was hailed by writer Roger Angell in the New York Times Book Review as "perhaps the best portrait yet . . . of an American sports hero."

The book's stature has grown with time. When Mr. Creamer published Stengel: His Life and Times, his 1984 biography of Stengel, the astute manager known for his comic malapropisms, the Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley wrote: "Now it can be said that Creamer has written the two best American sports biographies."

- Washington Post