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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sportswriting at its best, January 26, 2010
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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.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enjoyable Narrative of Early Professional Baseball and the Pitcher Who Dominated It, February 14, 2010
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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.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunningly good book -- would make a great movie but nobody would believe it!, February 14, 2010
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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.
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