Alan, the confirmation, or refutation when necessary, of what we believe is never a pointless exercise.

Especially for a writer.

The fact that there have long been whispered rumors of Babe Ruth possibly having mixed ancestry, and then taking as deep a dive as possible into the matter, was the point. And I enjoyed the read, because it taught me several things about Babe Ruth, as it pertains to our racial reality in America, that I didn't know.

That. was. the. point.

On a related note, the singer Steven Tyler of Aerosmith was long believed, at least within the black community, to have black ancestry. Why? Because of his famously large lips, a physical attribute that isn't common to the facial phenotype of Europeans.

As you may (or may not) know, his daughter, Liv Tyler, who shares that very flattering attribute with her dad, delved into her ancestry on the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?" in 2017. And she learned that she does, in fact, have black ancestry dating back to slavery (of course), which stems from the maternal side of her *father's* family.

It's a fascinating watch, which can be found on YouTube, if you haven't seen it and you're curious.