The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball [Hardcover]

Tim Darnell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

A history of the Atlanta minor league team spanning 60 years

Editorial Reviews

Review

...a must-read for anyone who gets teary at the magnolia in what once was centerfield at old Poncey... -- Paul Hemphill, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Heart of the Game: The Education of a Minor-League Ballplayer

A great trip through a special time in Southern Sports. -- Ernie Harwell, Baseball Hall of Famer and Atlanta Crackers radio announcer, 1943-1948

this book...brought back some wonderful memories of the majesty of the Crackers and the magic of baseball. -- U.S. Senator Zell Miller

“Before we had the Braves, the Crackers were our team.” -- Jimmy Carter

About the Author

Tim Darnell has served as a reporter for two weekly Atlanta newspapers and as editor of four local and national business magazines. He is the general manager of the minor league Albany Alligators. He lives in Atlanta and Albany, Georgia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Hill Street Press (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588180778
• ISBN-13: 978-1588180773
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,010,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of love, not much attention to detail, November 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball (Hardcover)

Tim Darnell obviously loves the history of minor and Negro league baseball in Atlanta, and has done a great service by pulling together material from interviews, newspaper accounts, and more obscure sources to produce the first attempt at a comprehensive book on the subject.

Being a huge fan of minor league baseball myself, and having lived for a number of years two blocks from the former site of Ponce de Leon Park, I became quite excited when I first heard of the impending publication of this book. I was genuinely expecting to love it. Unfortunately, I found it more frustrating than entertaining, and too riddled with errors to be definitive.

Within a few pages of beginning the book, I began to be dismayed by the all-too-frequent awkwardness and sloppiness of Darnell's writing. Then, I began noticing factual errors and inept turns of phrase that even the most rudimentary efforts at copyediting should have prevented from appearing in print. Names are bungled, including names of players who played in the majors, and thus for whom ample reference sources for cross-checking exist.

One could forgive a certain amount of this, if Darnell didn't also seem too willing to repeat bits of baseball folklore and legend as if they were documented fact, without offering any evidence to support them, or if his account of events were not dominated by a relatively small set of former players, fans, and club employees. One can't fault Darnell for only being able to interview a small number of former Crackers (there aren't many left from the glory days of the franchise), but one can fault him for presenting their recollections as-is, without any evident attempt to verify them or augment them with supporting material. The effect of all this is to make it impossible to trust anything in the book.

Darnell might have been better off presenting his material in the form of an oral history of the Crackers and the Black Crackers, with some brief introductory and interstitial material of his own. At least then readers' expectations would have been different and probably more in line with Darnell actually delivers in this book.

The problem with that approach, of course, is that magnolia trees don't talk, and neither do demolished athletic facilities. Ponce de Leon Park and it's magnolia are as much or more a part of Crackers history as Earl Mann, Country Brown, Whitlow Wyatt, or any of the other persons who helped make that history.

This is a seriously flawed book; one that I read with nearly as much dismay as relish. Nevertheless, it's the only work I'm aware that covers its subject, and thus it's a must-read/must-buy for anyone with anything more than a passing interest in minor league baseball in the South.

4.0 out of 5 stars it's o.k.., September 19, 2010

By 

Yankeefan215 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball (Hardcover)

it's o.k., i just wanted more about the organization , not just the player history

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Crackers: The Eary Days of Atlanta Baseball, December 15, 2008

By 

Kathy "unionmare08" (Marietta, Gabon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball (Hardcover)

Item was as discribed, even better than I expected. The item was shipped and received with in days of each other. Would buy from this vender again.