Baseball's stature in the history of the United States is perhaps reflected more clearly in a simple dictionary rather than in the seven-centimetre-thick baseball encyclopaedia. There, you can find the word Ruthian, meaning "of mammoth proportions", as in a home run by Babe Ruth back in the 1920s. There, you can find Lou Gehrig's disease, as the incurable degenerative illness amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has been better known since Lou Gehrig, Ruth's team-mate, died from it in the 1940s. In the United States, baseball and the English language are interwoven.