In alternating chapters of narrative and analysis, Reed Browning explains how the 1924 season marked the last time a team playing old-fashioned "inside" baseball won the championship. Along the way, the season featured two taut September pennant races and a variety of compelling human interest stories: George Sisler failing to recover his once incomparable batting eye after a sinus infection; Rogers Hornsby batting .424, a figure no player has matched since; Babe Ruth overcoming injuries in the opening and closing phases of the season to win his only batting crown; Dazzy Vance registering one of the greatest seasons that any post-dead-ball pitcher has ever chalked up; and the revered Walter Johnson, presumed over the hill, returning to glory in the regular season and then, after two disappointing Series starts, winning the seventh game in relief.
The season even had elements of a morality play, when in its closing days a Giant tried to bribe an opponent into throwing a game. Disclosure of the proposal prompted an American baseball public, already pulling for the underdog Washington team, to cast the Series as a struggle between good and evil. In addition to capturing the mounting drama of this extraordinary season, Browning places the story in a broader historical context. He discusses how baseball operated as a business in the 1920s, who the major league ball players were, what the fans and ballparks were like, how the game of baseball was played, and why the Washington club was able to win.
