| |  | Author: Lawrence S. Ritter
Publisher: Macmillan Publishing Company
Category: Book
List Price: $8.95
Buy Used: $1.14
You Save: $7.81 (87%)
Used (9) Collectible (4) from $1.14
Avg. Customer Rating:  72 reviews
Sales Rank: 2397913
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0020963505
EAN: 9780020963509
ASIN: 0020963505
Publication Date: June 1971
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Spine is creased and torn along edges. Cover is lightly stained and detached from text, yet remains secure. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust jacket may be missing). Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to changing lives through the power of work. The organization offers a wide range of employment and training programs free of charge to assist those with disabilities and other barriers to employment.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Don't Miss This One January 15, 2007
If you have only two baseball books in your library, the first one should be the "Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia". This should be the second.
If you have only one audio baseball book, let it be this one.
A Delight August 25, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The names Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner don't resonate as much as they used to. As the decades go by even the old-timers among us haven't been around long enough to remember them. They've pretty much become historical, iconic figures, like the stoic-looking George Washington on a dollar bill. It's a bit of a sad reminder of the inexorable march of time, but what a great relief to know that this treasure chest of a book is around to keep their memories alive.
The author got the idea for it in 1961 when he read that Ty Cobb had died. Realizing that many of Cobb's contemporaries would soon suffer the same fate, he set out to meet as many of them as he could and record--literally with a tape recorder--their stories for posterity. Twenty six of them are recounted here. Some of these guys are hall-of-famers, some of them not even close, but all of them--every single one--had a load of interesting tidbits to share. Baseball was a different game back then. America was a different place.
The first great thing about the book is that you get at least several takes on the great ballplayers. One of the fellows, for example, playing Detroit, talked about being a little nervous about Cobb, whom they had all heard would sharpen his spikes. A Detroit player, however, mentioned that Cobb never sharpened his spikes. Not that they didn't discourage the other team from thinking so.
Walter Johnson had an arm like a bullwhip, but he was a nice enough guy and a friend of Sam Crawford. Late in the game, if his team was ahead by enough runs, he'd toss a meatball in to Crawford and let him belt it. He never did that for Cobb, though, who he hated. Cobb could never figure out why Crawford was able to hit him.
Honus Wagner is recalled by many as the best of all of them, with great quickness, great hitting and great fielding. A couple of the fellows recall that you could usually count on bits of gravel to be flung at you along with the ball he had just scooped up. Tommy Leach described him as the best fielding third-baseman, shortstop, first-baseman and outfielder in the league--he played all of them--and since he won the batting title eight times between 1900 and 1911 you couldn't really argue that he wasn't the best hitter in the league, either.
For some odd reason, there aren't that many memorable gems about the great Babe Ruth, although there are at least a few. Harry Hooper (a guy I'd never heard of and a hall-of-famer) remembers Ruth in the first year he came up with Boston as a, "big, overgrown, green pea." "Nineteen years old, poorly educated, only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, he was gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over . . . If somebody had predicted that back on the Boston Red Sox in 1914, he would have been thrown into the lunatic asylum."
Along with these detailed sketches, including a ton of characters I haven't even mentioned--Germany Schaeffer, Rube Waddell (who didn't like to wear underwear), Lefty O'Doul, Dazzy Vance--the book is also, naturally, loaded with baseball anecdotes. Some of the more famous plays of the time, for example, are recounted in different ways and with different perceptions.
Take the "Bonehead" Merkle play. For those of you who don't know, what happened was this. The Giants were tied with the Cubs for first place with one week to go in the season. In a game against each other, in the bottom of the ninth of a 1-1 game, the Giants had men on first and third with two outs. Merkle was on first. Birdwell hit a single to center, McCormack scored from third, and Merkle . . . ran to the clubhouse. Without touching second. The Cubs retrieved the ball from center field, Evers tagged second, and the run didn't count. Because of the crowd on the field the game had to be replayed on a later date. The Giants lost it, and lost the pennant. From then on and forever more, Fred Merkle became "Bonehead" Merkle.
But it's actually a little more complicated than that. For one thing, Merkle was only nineteen. It was the first game he'd ever started for the Giants. And running into the clubhouse when the game was over was something all the guys did--whether touching second was necessary or not--because of the crowd pouring onto the field after the ushers opened the gates at the end of the game. The players ran off to get away from them. And Evers never did tag second base with the ball that was hit out to center because someone had heaved it into the left field stands. Fred Snodgrass doesn't think he ever tagged second with any ball at all. The umpires weren't around to know this, though; they had already left the field! Funny how the mists of history tend to simplify things. The detail in this book brings these stories back to life. And there are a ton of them recounted.
Along with all of this baseball lore, you get a pretty good glimpse of America a hundred years ago, too. People were more humble, but in general confident, and much more direct. It's fascinating just to consider their nicknames: "Wee Willie" was the nickname for a short guy, "Specs" was the guy who wore glasses, "Chief," (at least two of them) were American Indians, and, "Dummy" was the guy who was deaf and dumb. Nobody meant anything by it; nobody apparently took offense. Stuff like these speaks volumes.
Here's Jimmy Austin: " . . . they didn't have clubhouses in most parks, especially not for the visiting team. We'd get into uniform at the hotel and ride out to the ball park in a bus drawn by four horses. They used to call it a tally-ho in those days. We'd sit on seats along the sides and ride, in uniform, to the ballpark and back.
"That ride was always a lot of fun. Kids running alongside as we went past, and rotten tomatoes once in a while. Always lots of excitement when the ball club rode by, you know."
Yep. Thanks in part to this book, we know all right.
An Invaluable Book . . . January 22, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
. . .for those interested in baseball history or for those who are curious how the game was played a hundred years ago. Life was different: society was different, the players were different, the game was different, and the perception of the players were different. In the decades in between, a lot has changed, mostly for the better, but there are precious few books that can give us an insight to how the game of baseball was played by the major leaguers back then. There is no opportunity to learn from them any more - they're all gone. All we have left are treasures such as this book, which gives us an insight to the game and personalities who played back then: no one can describe a Walter Johnson fastball, an Ed Walsh spitball, a booming shot off the bat of Sam Crawford, or the way a certain player stood, batted, fielded or threw. Lawrence Ritter created the standard for the oral history of baseball and it's been imitated many times, but never as well (Don Honig came close, though). It's a wonderful book, well worth the time and money to read it.
Tremendous book! November 4, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A wonderful book about baseball in the early part of the century. You can imagine yourself sitting next to the old guys listening to their stories of baseball in the days of dead ball. It's not necessarily what you would think...it wasn't all hard drinking and hard living.
Even a casual fan will enjoy this book. I'm hoping my kids will soon be picking it up and reading it because I know it will deepen their love of baseball, still the greatest American game in my mind.
Oral History of a Bygone Era August 13, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Funny and poignant stories about baseball when it was less commercialized. My favorite is the one about Germany Schaefer who stole second base, then stole first (to the bewilderment of all) and then stole second base again, all within one at bat. This is about the exuberance and wonder of boyhood.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
