Commy": The Life Story of Charles A. Comiskey (The Mcfarland Historical Baseball Library, 2) | 
 enlarge | Author: G. W. Axelson
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Category: Book
Buy New: $35.00
New (6) Used (3) from $29.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1725760
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 248
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 0786415983
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357092
EAN: 9780786415984
ASIN: 0786415983
Publication Date: February 10, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Book Description
This biography of Charles "Commy" Comiskey is one of the earliest and most important—and, up to now, one of the hardest for baseball researchers to get their hands on—in the baseball canon. Comiskey spent half a century in the big leagues as a successful player-manager and owner, his clubs winning nine pennants along the way. But the dark cloud that hangs over him is the 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which he is inextricably tangled, fair or not. Comiskey's tight-fistedness is often cited as a principal cause of the 1919 World Series scandal. Commy suspected that the fix was on after the White Sox lost the first two games, and even implored his old friend, American League president Ban Johnson, to suspend the Series, but the tide of history could not be dammed. Historians of the game will find much valuable insight here on the rise of baseball in the Windy City, Comiskey's playing career (as an innovative first baseman), his long stint as St. Louis Browns player-manager (which included four straight pennants from 1885 to 1888), his helping Johnson form the American League, and his keeping the White Sox a family-owned franchise for nearly 60 years. Surprisingly, this is the only biography of Comiskey ever published. Fortunately, Axelson allows "The Old Roman" to speak for himself briefly in the last seven pages of the book. Here Comiskey comes across as humble and earnest, concluding his message with, "What I have tried to do [in baseball] has been my level best."
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| Customer Reviews:
What A Disappointment! May 18, 2007
I'm a big White Sox fan, so I thought reading about the founder of the club would be interesting. Well I was so wrong.
Mr. Axelson is obviously a big fan of his topic. There is nothing in this book except what a great guy Comiskey was. Well that's all fine. But I wanted to read about the effort to place the new American League team in Chicago and the problems dealing with the National League team already in town, the building of Comiskey Park. Learn something about his family,especially his father the Alderman. All is covered in a few paragraphs and then we get back to how great a guy Comiskey was.The building of Comiskey Park is done in one paragraph, but I understand Comiskey was a great guy during it's construction.
Also this was written pre-Black Sox so nothing about that black eye to the great guy is mentioned. It is also written in a flowery some times overly descriptive style, which I think is due to the author being a newspaper man. By the way did I mention Comiskey was a great guy?
There is really little to learn here unless your interest is in baseball in it's very early years. And even then what you will mostly learn was the Comiskey was a great guy. Did I mention that Comiskey was a great guy?
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