Customer Reviews

Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had

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I was pleasantly surprised with this book. As a lover of American history I was drawn to this subject. As an aficionada of good literary prose I was kept drawn to this story. Edward Achorn succeeds in both as a researcher and as a writer, and his dedication to this subject pays off well.

1884 was a time when Irish and Englishmen reigned in baseball. Professional sports was a means to vent their cultural and political differences out on the ball field toward each other. Sabotage, corruption and off-field assaults and attempted murders were commonfold, and the paying American public seems to have wanted more of that. These hard-drinking, tobacco-spitting gloveless players were a cacophony of characters, all which make this read all the more entertaining. 1884 was the time when city teams still had names that related to their town: the Buffalo Bisons, the Boston Beaneaters, the Chicago White Stockings, and they played for the National League, the American Association, or the short-lived Union Association.

Achorn weaves the history of corporate Baseball with the life story of Radbourn. Baseball players of the 1880s were non-union players who were owned by the team. They were luckily to earn a few hundred dollars a month. If they were injured they didn't play, and if they didn't play, they either didn't earn their keep or they made a few dollars taking tickets from the entering crowd. All this affected Radbourn's career decisions. "Traveling hooligans," as many baseball players were referred to by non-fans, were not much admired by the general public, but for the team owners and the paying fans, they were the beginning of corporate sports. They were also a part of the growth of American Industry, and with it its corruption. Yet baseball was perhaps the one way for a lower-class immigrant man to make a decent living. Baseball was clearly still a "white man's sport," and even the admission price of 50 cents (plus another 25 cents for the grand stand) was too much for black men to pay. The prices kept the sport artificially segregated.

Achorn also covers the historical passages of baseball, the American paying public, and the careers of some rival baseball players (Charlie Sweeney, perhaps the first recorded athlete-turned-attempted-murderer), team managers and umpires. The year 1884 reached the first height of team rivalry between cities and team managers. Team owners became more aggressive with their recruiting tactics, when players were traded elsewhere and where some of the earlier great players developed.

For readers more interested in Charles Radbourn's love life can skip to half-way through this book, to Chapter 10, "A Working Girl." Here is where we read about Charles' big love, Carrie Stanhorpe. Working as either a prostitute or a boarding house madam (even Radbourn isn't sure), she was also afflicted with syphilis, a disease she passed down to Radbourn. They didn't marry until 1895, two years before his death. Their love story doesn't dominate the book, though, which continues to focus on the team feuds between New York, Boston, Chicago and St Louis.

Radbourn, known for his strong pitch and mercurial temperament, struggled with constant pain in his shoulders and right arm. He swallowed his pain with whiskey, turning into a downright drunkard when he wasn't playing. Drinking was still the #1 cure for sports-related injuries at a time when sports medicine was still in its infancy.

Although this book covers 11 years of Radbourn's pitching career, the focus remains on 1884 and its many characters. Written like a fast-pitched game, I enjoyed this read. Sure, it skips around with the years from time to time, especially when Achorn described individual players, but his writing style helps the reader follow the story well. Readers simply have to remember that the focus of this book is 1884 and the many changes that came with it for baseball.

I recommend this book for baseball lovers, lovers of history and even for people who enjoy reading biographies. Achorn is a Pulitzer-Prize finalist for commentary writing, and his talent shines through in his first book.

Charles Radbourn, known to all as "Old Hoss," was a freak of nature. Pitching in the National League between 1880 and 1891, he compiled a 309-195 career record. During that time he played with several teams, including the Providence Grays (1880-1885), the Boston Beaneaters (1886-1889), Boston Reds (1890), and Cincinnati Reds (1891). He entered the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.

This enjoyable, delightfully-written, and well-structured book deals with his career, but concentrates on Radbourn's 1884 campaign when he set a MLB record of 59 wins (although some accounts say he won 60), 441 strikeouts, and a 1.38 ERA. I am reasonably certain that his win and strikeout totals will last indefinitely. Edward Achorn, an editor of the "Providence Journal," has written this account as a labor of love for a hometown hero of the nineteenth century.

This is quite excellent baseball history, comparable to "Crazy `08" by Cait Murphy that was also published by HarperCollins. It does a fine job of setting a time and place, drawing a portrait of an experience in nineteenth century America, and offering a compelling narrative. That is its strength and its reason for reading. One will not find sophisticated scholarly explication or sabermetric statistical analysis.

Even for those not fan of nineteenth century baseball history, including me, "Fifty-nine in `84" is a good starting point to help understand the formation of the professional baseball establishment.

Fifty-nine in '84 tells the story of Charlie "Old Hoss" Radbourn and the 1884 Providence Grays, who were a team in baseball's National League. Radbourn rung up an astounding fifty-nine pitching victories that year and, as an afterthought, won all three games in baseball's first World Series. But this book is about more than just Radbourn, the Grays, and barehanded baseball in general -- reading it will give you a profound sense of what life was like in late-19th century urban America. Author Edward Achorn is an evocative writer who paints pictures with his words, stirring vivid imagery of horse-drawn carriages, pollution-spewing smoke stacks, and the incessant competitiveness of almost every aspect of urban life during this time of great upheaval in the U.S.

Normally I wouldn't worry about "spoilers" in a non-fiction work, but be warned that this summary contains some: As I said in the title of this review, "Fifty-nine in '84" would make a great movie, but the real-life plot is so preposterous, most viewers would be unable to suspend disbelief if they didn't know it was a true story. The action begins at the start of the 1884 baseball season, when the Providence Grays -- who led the pennant race for most of 1883 but faltered at the end -- have brought on hot-shot rookie pitcher Charles Sweeney. This does not make the jealous Radbourn -- who set a record for most pitching wins the previous season -- happy in the least, especially when Sweeney is depicted as the team's ace and given the opening-day starting assignment. In these days, teams normally used only two starting pitchers, and once a game was started, it was expected that the pitcher finish it, so Sweeney and Radbourn took turns pitching for the Grays.

About a quarter of the way through the season, Sweeney throws nineteen strikeouts in one game -- a major-league record that would stand for 102 years, until broken by Roger Clemens. After coming home from the road game where this happened, Providence throws Sweeney a big parade -- inflaming Radbourn's jealousy. Soon after, the overworked Sweeney says he needs rest, so it's up to Radbourn to go it alone. Radbourn demands that he be paid Sweeney's salary in addition to his own ($3,000; among the highest in the league!), but management refuses. Against this backdrop, the rogue Union Association baseball league is trying to steal Radbourn away from the NL's second-place Grays. Under the collusive rules of the two major leagues (the NL and the American Association), players who break their contracts to play for "rogue" leagues like the UA are forever blacklisted, but Radbourn wants out of the "unappreciative" Providence so badly, he strongly contemplates jumping. Ultimately, he has a "crack up" on the field and is suspended without pay, leading him to the precipice of leaving the Grays.

It should be noted here that the Providence press has been hard on Radbourn all year at this point. They suggest his claims of chronic soreness are false, that he's not trying his hardest, and that he's jealous of the younger hurler Sweeney. Radbourn, at this point, is already on pace to beat his all-time best 48 wins from the year before, and the Grays are in second place! So Sweeney has to go it alone for a time while Radbourn sits out, and Sweeney ends up having a "crack up" too -- only much worse: He shows up at a game with two prostitutes (which are ubiquitous throughout the book, by the way), and after taking the lead into the 7th inning, the Grays' manager orders him to move into right field and let another player take over the pitching duties. In these days, being "unable" to finish a game made a player look bad, so Sweeney refuses. Ultimately, he leaves the field entirely -- and in those days, you weren't allowed to make mid-game substitutions except in the case of injury -- so the Grays had to complete the game with only eight players! Now Sweeney is expelled from the team and the National League and black-listed from the majors altogether! After boozing and whoring in Providence for a few days, he signs up with the St. Louis team in the Union Association.

At this point, the Grays are still in second place. But over the course of eight days, they went from looking great, with two of the best pitchers of all time, to having neither of them, and the team's board of directors come perilously close to folding the team mid-season! Instead, they swallow their pride and bring back Radbourn, agreeing to pay him Sweeney's paltry salary in addition to his own and, more importantly, to grant him an unconditional release from his contract if he can pitch Providence's way to the pennant. As you know, he does.

Radbourn was quite a character: He was the first man in history to be photographed giving his middle finger to the camera, and is likely the source of the term "Charlie horse." He set the record for most pitching wins in a season and won the first world series -- but today he is virtually unknown. He took his used-up arm back to his home in Illinois and made some wise investments, but lost most of his wealth in an economic panic later in his life. Ultimately, he gets shot in the face while hunting, and although it isn't fatal, it dashes his hopes of returning to the big leagues. He dies at 42, anyway, of syphilis, which he most likely contracted from his prostitute-turned-wife. These were hard and interesting times, and Edward Achorn's book captures them beautifully. A "history" book without focus can be dull and tedious, but given a proper prism through which to examine the "on-the-ground" history of people who really lived it, a book like Achorn's can educate as well as entertain. I loved every second of reading "Fifty-nine in '84," and give it my most fervent recommendation.

FIFTY-NINE in EIGHTY-FOUR is not your typical baseball book in that it describes what conditions were like in nineteenth century America and in Providence, Rhode Island, where Radbourn pitched his great season.

For instance shopgirls, like Radbourn's paramour Carrie Standhope, made only five or six hours a week, while being required to wear expensive stylish clothes. Some of them were forced into prostitution.

Author Edward Achorn also goes into elaborate detail about how the game was different. Not only did the athletes play the game barehanded, but there was only one umpire, which resulted in cheating: taking a shortcut from first the third on a base hit, tripping the runner on his way by second base etc.
The pitcher also threw from a box instead of the mound. He could run up toward the batter before throwing and he was only fifty feet away from home plate.

Radbourn was able to win fifty-nine games (some say sixty) because he was virtually the only pitcher the Providence had during the last half of the season. At the beginning of the season, Charles Sweeney was considered the ace, but Radbourn was terribly jealous and when Sweeney went down with a sore arm, he demanded more money and was suspended for a week. When Sweeney was kicked off the team for public drunkenness, Rad had to go it alone. The directors of the club briefly considered disbanding the team as they eventually did after the next season. According to Achorn, Radbourn was a "junk ball" pitcher, mixing speeds, throwing from different places in the box, and sometimes throwing overhand, which had recently been legalized.

Achorn also gives us a look at some of the greatest players of the 19th century, Mike Kelly of the Chicago White Sox, Harry Wright, the original manager of the Cincinnati Redlegs, the first professional team and Radbourn's first manager on the Grays, Dan Brouthers, one of the greatest hitters of the 19th century, and "Pud" Galvin, one of the winningest pitchers in major league history.

Achorn covers all fifty-nine wins and the three games Radbourn won in the first world series against the New York Metropolitans of the American Association. Achorn also shows us the sad conclusion to Radbourn's life. Like many professional athletes, he had a hard time adjusting to civilian life back in Bloomington, Illinois, his home town.

Were I teaching a course in the history of baseball, "Fifty-nine in '84" would be an excellent selection for starting the course. The book focuses on the career of early baseball icon Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn while admirably filling in the background of baseball during the era. Although reading descriptions of several games consecutively can run a little dry at times, the depth of research makes this a worthy read.

Even in the 21st century, some of Radbourn's story could be scandalous. Stories of secret marriage, booze, and dirty baseball permeate the story. Nineteenth century baseball was brutal with barehanded fielding and little protection for the hitter. Pitchers were expected to pitch almost as regularly as any position player. As a result, the shelf-life of a pitcher was short. The brutal nature of the game coincided with the hard living.

Radbourn is portrayed as an early ancestor of the ego-centric athlete with contract demands and refusing to concede the spotlight to a younger pitcher star on the team. But in his defense, he was able to carry his team after his complaining ceased. His involvement with Carrie Stanhope is discussed, but this aspect of the story is very incomplete. This is probably due to a lack of solid information, but some readers may perceive it as sloppy writing.

Winning 59 games in season is unattainable in the current era because of the awareness of what throwing such a staggering number of pitches can do to the human arm. The win total is made more remarkable by the fact that "Old Hoss" walked away from the team for a significant portion of the season. Achorn completed extensive research to create this entertaining portrait of Radbourn. Any baseball fan can learn a great deal of beasball history by reading this book. Revealing to much of Radbourn's story would take away from the enjoyment of the book for some.

This is not normally the type of book I would read, so it is amazing that I liked it so much. As a way of explanation, I used to live in the Bloomington IL area and my hobby is walking graveyards/looking for unusual graves. I found 'OLD HOSS' in Evergreen Cemetery many years ago and other than knowing that he was inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame fairly early on, I could find little or nothing about about Radbourn except his baseball stats and that he died from the prolonged effects of syphillis.
As it turned out, Radbourn in life was a reticent person who rarely allowed the public a personal view of his life off the field. Author Edward Achorn has managed to unearth enough information to flesh out Radbourn and give us a look at his private life including his relationship with a woman named Carrie Stanhope who Radbourn passed off not only as a widow but also his wife (neither was true at the time). Through historical research, Achorn managed to stunningly recreate 19th century life in Bloomington and Providence where most of the story occurs. He more importantly introduces his reader to early baseball which was rough-and-tumble and uncontrolled and where players played ball with bare hands and more than likely would have fights on the field as well as off.
This book would definitely appeal to most baseball fans. I think it might also appeal to anyone interested in a social history of 19th century America. While Charles Radbourn wasn't as quirky as Ty Cobb, his story is interesting and very readable.

Some people tend to discount the baseball records that were set before the twentieth century, finding one excuse or another to diminish the achievements of the men on the field. While it is true that some of the rules were different, especially concerning the actions of the pitcher, the game still required the same skills to succeed. For decades, two of the records that were considered unattainable were Ty Cobb's record for total hits and Lou Gehrig's string of consecutive games. Both of these records have fallen, making it appear that all records will eventually be reset.
However, two that clearly are unachievable are Cy Young's record for the number of lifetime wins as a pitcher and Charles Radbourn's for wins in a season. Radbourn won 59 games in the 1884 season as well as three in the subsequent World Series, the first ever played. At a time when 30 wins in a season is an extraordinary achievement, getting nearly twice that seems beyond even the most chemically enhanced star.
Professional baseball in the 1880's was a brutal business, the men played barehanded, there were few provisions for substitution and the men were only a few short rungs on a ladder above slaves. The reserve clause bound a man to an organization for life; his only way out was to retire or to somehow get the team to trade him. Nevertheless, men fought hard for their position on a team, for if they couldn't make a living in baseball, it would have been back to the steel mills, farms, factories or mines, where a man could be crippled or killed with no compensation.
Achorn does an excellent job of setting the complete historical context for Radbourn's incredible season. His detail in describing the state of baseball, the economic and social situations in the United States, ethnic tensions, the plight of the workers and the filth in the cities is exemplary. He pulls no punches in talking about the love many players had for heavy drink and fast women and how it shortened careers and helped determine the champions. Achorn is even very explicit about Radbourn suffering from syphilis and what a scourge it was in the late nineteenth century.
In many ways, this book is a description of life in the United States in the late nineteenth century, how dirty and unforgiving life was and how tough the general and baseball workingman had to be to survive. Modern players will be surprised to hear the stories of batters getting hit in the head by a pitch in a time of no batting helmets and then getting up and continuing the at-bat as there was no awarding of first when you were hit by a pitch. Men were knocked unconscious, had their fingers split and suffered other serious injuries on the field but kept on playing. Radbourn was in near constant pain over the course of the season and was "forced" to consume large amounts of whiskey to keep it at a manageable level. While the emphasis is on the 1884 season, this is a story about life first and baseball second.

In the year 1884 a Providence, RI pitcher named "Old Hoss Radbourn" won 59 National League games with an l.38 ERA. He then pitched and won all three games of the very first World Series. That feat will probably never be equaled? Incredibly this reviewer could not put this page-turner down even while watching the Super Bowl on television. Even the goal line stand of the Colts on their one yard line wasn't as exciting as the drama of Old Hoss Radbourn and his Providence Grays battling it out in Boston's South End Grounds against the Boston Red Stockings in that most famous ball park of the time for the lead in the 1884 National League pennant race. In addition to capturing the excitement and brutality of baseball during that era, the book is full of baseball trivia. For instance that fabled ballpark was located under what is now the Ruggles MBTA Station.
For the modern baseball fans, (that word is the nickname of fanatics according to this tome), this book is brimming over with fascinating baseball history. This is the era when pitchers often pitched every game without relief and the catcher's mitt and body padding hadn't yet been invented, or at least not applied to the sport of baseball. The catchers caught the ball with their almost bare hands wearing only some leather gloves with the finger coverings cut away. Catching pitches without a mitt was murder on the player's hands and fingers, which were often a bloody mess after only a few innings. "To reduce the threat of serious injury, catchers at times backed up ten feet behind home plate, and gingerly caught the pitch on a bounce. That didn't work when there were runners on base "or when there were two strikes in the count, since the rules required them to catch the third strike on the fly to register an out." To achieve that, they had to bend over in exactly the same spot as current catchers. And they weren't crouched down, but standing up and bent over at the waist with their hands cupped in front of their groin area and facing the pitcher to provide a target for the pitcher to aim to hit for a strike. There were no chest protectors or other padding in those days. The book doesn't mention whether they had padding over their private parts. If not, it's unlikely many catchers missed catching the ball thrown toward that area?
The professional baseball players of this time were tough as tough can be. They were also colorful. "Old Hoss Radbourn" was the son of a butcher from Illinois. His 130-pound catcher was a poor Irishman from Boston. The players weren't rich or pampered and they had to work hard and risk their health in order to get paid what would now be considered a pittance. Radbourn for instance also made his contribution to the history of photography. In the book's cover picture, which like most of the pictures of the players mentioned in the book was reproduced from old baseball cards, shows Old Hoss with a sparkle in his eye casually and subtly giving the camera the bird. He'd become the first photographic subject in history to achieve that feat shortly before when he slyly added the same gesture in the team picture.
This reviewer loves both Boston and Providence so this book interested me for the wonderful pictures that the author painted of both Boston and Providence in the mid-1800s. Both those cities have enjoyed excellent historical architectural preservation and many of the places so colorfully portrayed in the 1800s still exist. The descriptions of the booming Industrial Revolution and the volcano-like chimneys polluting the air with sooty clouds of coal dust seem almost unimaginable today. The descriptions of the general public and their lifestyles were particularly well told. More than once this reviewer had to Google several subjects to double-check some of the material in the book even though the book has an excellent section of notes and sources as well as game-by-game stats.
The author's love for both baseball and for Providence (he is an editor at the "Providence Journal") is obvious from the passion of his writing. As a member of Red Sox Nation even I found myself rooting for the Grays over the Beaneaters in the titanic struggles between these early professional baseball players. Old Hoss had a life-long love for "Carrie Stanhope, the proprietress of a boarding house with shady overtones, a woman who was said to personally know every man in the National League" along with almost every actor who performed in Providence. The book points out that while the Plantation of Rhode Island was part of Puritanical New England, it was not only over-whelming Republican, but it was also the "Wild West" of New England. Every train stopped in Providence and most passengers interested in a little fun arranged to spend a few hours there between trains. The longest train station in the world was located within easy walking distance of the sprawling adult entertainment districts of Providence. There were plenty of full time and part time street walkers (thanks largely to the fact female shop workers weren't paid enough to live on), bawdy houses, taverns and gambling dens all guarded by the underpaid local police who were grateful to provide protection in exchange for cash and/ or services.
This book will enthrall baseball fans that may or may not be familiar with the exciting history of the game. It certainly did knock this reviewer out of the ballpark. My throwing arm and hands were aching and felt bruised and swollen just from the descriptions of what the pitchers and catchers went through to play this game. And one more sample of the book's trivia is that the pitchers signaled the catcher what kind of pitch they were going to throw. Over the years that role has been reversed. This is a sports page-turner like this reviewer has never before had the pleasure of reading. It's a wonderful gift for any serious, or even not-so-serious baseball fanatic.

Usually I read three or four books at a time because I find that most don't hold my interest that well. But I devoured this book in two days. Well written is too easy an appellation to put on this book, look up the word accomplishment in the Thesaurus and copy down the first hundred and you'll get the idea. 'Old Hoss' Radbourn (or Radbourne or Radburn or..it differs on his Hall of Fame plaque and gravestone) was an enigma even in the days of barehanded play. He was quiet to the point of reticence and seldom spoke to the 'press' much less anyone else. He just wanted to go out and do his job and then at the end be left alone.

In 1883 he won an astounding 48 games in a 98 game season. But like an "Old Hoss" the next year he won 59 in a 112 game season. Because the National League had added fourteen games to the schedule in 1884, it was thought that every team would need two starters. So the Providence Grays added Charlie Sweeney was brought on to the team to alternated with Radbourn. Both of them were having amazing seasons (Sweeney would have 41 wins himself) but after Sweeney had 19 strikeouts (a record that stood for over 100 years) against the hated Boston Red Stockings, Radbourn became even more sullen than his usual self. At a point in the season, Sweeney complained that he couldn't pitch and 'Old Hoss' had to go out there almost everyday for two weeks.

One day Sweeney came to the ball park drunk and though he pitched seven innings and was winning, he got into a shouting match with the Coach when he tried to take Sweeney out. The Team then fined Sweeney and put him on suspension. Sweeney had gotten to big for his britches. After being offered a $1000 bonus to jump to the new "Union Association" the Grays were left with only one starter. Hoss was livid, not only did he have to pitch while Sweeney was 'dogging' it, now he had left the team 'high and dry'. Hoss told the Gray's owners, that he would start the rest of the season (forty-three games) if they paid agreed to pay him the rest of Sweeney's salary and release him from the 'reserve clause' in his contract at the end of the season. This would have allowed him to sign with any team he wanted, making him a free agent before the word was coined.

During this remarkable run, Radbourn won eighteen games in a row while the team won twenty. At the end of the season he had an astounding record of 59 wins and 12 losses with an ERA of 1.38. He started 40 of the 43 games, winning 36 and hit for over .300. After the season, the Grays played the New York franchise of the American Association and the Grays won all three games of the "Championship Series", with Radbourn pitching three complete games. The next year he surprised everyone by re-signing with the Grays but he never won thirty games again retiring in 1891 at the age of 36 with 309 wins. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1938 by the Veterans Committee.

Zeb Kantrowitz

Fifty Nine in 84 recounts the record setting season of Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn during which he won more games than any other pitcher in baseball. The book is particularly effective in discussing Radbourn's drive and his increasing pain as he goes through the season. A taciturn man, Radbourn comes across as distant, but then he was that way in life. An interesting aspect of his life, explored quite well here, was his relationship with his wife. Carrie was a woman of "questionable" reputation, a broadinghouse owner and probable madam and prosititute. Radbourn was devoted to her though and his commitment is inspiring. The descriptions of the games move along nicely and there are some strongly drawn portraits of the players (often terse, they get right to the point, as in the Cap Anson description). I especially appreciate the weaving of social and cultural history in this book, it is not just about baseball but rather the seedy, often violent world in which it operated. A good read for fans and those wanting a glimpse into 19th America.