Thom reviewed The World Series in the Deadball Era by Steve Steinberg
Review of 'The World Series in the Deadball Era' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
This not-quite-coffee table book has a completely honest subtitle. It is a love-letter to the sports writers of the time - Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, and others. Unfortunately errors and a poor index bring my rating down quite a ways. Thoroughly forgettable.
There were aspects I did enjoy, certainly. The descriptive language of the writers puts today's output (on paper or web site) to shame. As research material, it is interesting to compare and contrast 1903 with 1918 or 1919. For instance, gambling is talked about freely each year - and the early years pointed out where players among the bettors. A very interesting contrast with the 1919 Black Sox, and even Pete Rose of more recent years.
Each section (a day's worth of reports) is introduced by a few italicized sentences saying what happened in the game being reported on. Imagine my surprise to see the 1903 …
This not-quite-coffee table book has a completely honest subtitle. It is a love-letter to the sports writers of the time - Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, and others. Unfortunately errors and a poor index bring my rating down quite a ways. Thoroughly forgettable.
There were aspects I did enjoy, certainly. The descriptive language of the writers puts today's output (on paper or web site) to shame. As research material, it is interesting to compare and contrast 1903 with 1918 or 1919. For instance, gambling is talked about freely each year - and the early years pointed out where players among the bettors. A very interesting contrast with the 1919 Black Sox, and even Pete Rose of more recent years.
Each section (a day's worth of reports) is introduced by a few italicized sentences saying what happened in the game being reported on. Imagine my surprise to see the 1903 World Series won on October 13th by the Pittsburg Pirates, five games to three --- when the Boston Red Sox had been leading four games to three previously (it was a best-of-nine series). Little errors like that were found in more than a few places, leading me to question some of the photo captions as well. For the stats geek, a single page with the box scores for each series would also be welcome. Fortunately, they are available online.
Still, as a love letter to the writers, there are some great examples in this book. One example, from 1910:
"The Cubs are drifting, wavering, wobbling, and apparently lost in the fog of defeat, torn, punctured, and bedraggled by the tornado of the Athletics' base hits and the sea wall of the Quakers' defense that was a solid and impenetrable as adamant."
Or from 1911:
"Until the seventh inning, when the Giants first attained speaking acquaintance with home plate, Coombs was invincible. Eight men, including the most consistent swatters of the National Leaguers, had bitten on his famous drop, and but four hits had been made off his delivery. And so accurate was the flinging of the sterling right-hander that no free transportation, either by wildness or a batter's anatomy being nicked by the spheroid, was distributed."
They just don't write 'em like that any more.