Five OClock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees [Hardcover]

Harvey Frommer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2007

Advance Praise for Five O'Clock Lightning

"Come along with Harvey Frommer on a jaunty stroll through baseball eighty years ago. The 1927 Yankees may or may not have been the best team ever, but surely this is the best book about that wonderful concentration of talent."
--George F. Will

"Harvey Frommer brings the perceptive eye of a historian to what was arguably the most feared batting order of all time. Add to that his contagious enthusiasm for classic baseball and you have a most enjoyable book."
--Roger Kahn

"An engrossing and entertaining look at a mythical baseball team. Ride the trains, chew the tobacco, and have fun."
--Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth

"How great were the '27 Yankees? So great that even now, eighty years later, they still have the power to astonish and entertain. Reading Five O'Clock Lightning, I felt almost as if I were on the road with the Babe, Lou, and Miller Huggins. Harvey Frommer has a great eye for detail and a wonderful ability to bring his characters to life. The book is a delight."
--Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

"Harvey Frommer hits a home run in this sweet look back at a time when baseball was the only game and the Yankees seemed to be the only team."
--Dan Shaughnessy, author of Senior Year

"Baseball's greatest team as recounted by baseball's greatest author, Harvey Frommer. A surefire classic!"
--Seth Swirsky, author of Baseball Letters and Something to Write Home About

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Frommer (A Yankee Century; Red Sox vs. Yankees) spares no detail in this exhaustive but sometimes tedious recounting of the 1927 New York Yankees championship season. The team, which won 110 games when the regular season was eight games shorter than it is today, starred the iconic Babe Ruth and a young Lou Gehrig. Ruth had his career high 60 home run season, and Gehrig batted in a league-leading 175 runs. The Yankees' trademark rallies were dubbed Five O'clock Lightning, as they often scored in late innings when the clock struck five (Yankee Stadium in those days had no lights, and most games started at 3:30 p.m.). Frommer sets the stage with a sweeping overview of New York in the 1920s, and then chronologically rehashes the preseason, spring training, each month of the regular season and then the four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He concludes with a chapter containing obituaries of all 31 members of the team, many of whom succumbed at early ages: Gehrig died 14 years after the 1927 season, at the age of 38, and Ruth 21 years later, at 53. Unfortunately, Frommer fails to put together an engaging narrative, simply offering a compendium of facts and statistics. (Nov.)
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Review

Frommer (A Yankee Century; Red Sox vs. Yankees) spares no detail in this exhaustive but sometimes tedious recounting of the 1927 New York Yankees championship season. The team, which won 110 games when the regular season was eight games shorter than it is today, starred the iconic Babe Ruth and a young Lou Gehrig. Ruth had his career high 60 home run season, and Gehrig batted in a league-leading 175 runs. The Yankees' trademark rallies were dubbed "Five O'clock Lightning," as they often scored in late innings when the clock struck five (Yankee Stadium in those days had no lights, and most games started at 3:30 p.m.). Frommer sets the stage with a sweeping overview of New York in the 1920s, and then chronologically rehashes the preseason, spring training, each month of the regular season and then the four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He concludes with a chapter containing obituaries of all 31 members of the team, many of whom succumbed at early ages: Gehrig died 14 years after the 1927 season, at the age of 38, and Ruth 21 years later, at 53. Unfortunately, Frommer fails to put together an engaging narrative, simply offering a compendium of facts and statistics. (Nov.) (Publishers Weekly, September 10, 2007)

"Baseball fans, particularly those who root for the Bronx bombers, will devour this book..."  (simcoe.com, Thursday 22nd November)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068911270X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689112706
• ASIN: 0471778125
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #339,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Ruth, Babe

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Three Stars, December 8, 2007

By 

C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Five OClock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees (Hardcover)

This is the second book on the New York Yankees entitled Five O'Clock Lightning. The first came out a few years ago and was written by former Yankee Tommy Henrich and Bill Gilbert. This new version on the 1927 Yankees provides us with an introduction to each of the players on the roster including Manager Miller Huggins and batboy Eddie Bennett. We are provided with anecdotes regarding Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Joe Dugan, Bob Meusel, Urban Shocker, manager Miller Huggins, and others, but if you have done some significant reading on baseball history you will find many of the same stories repeated here. The regular season is covered with more statistics than I care to read about. The World Series against the Pirates follows, but it is hard to jazz up a four game route. To me the best part of the book was the final section regarding what happened in the future to each of those involved. The reader will know about Ruth, Gehrig, and Huggins, but the demise of the remaining members of the team is covered as well. The book is a quick read depending on your background. Writer Damon Runyon's name is misspelled (Runyan) three times on pages 74 and 75. Regarding the 1927 Yankees St. Louis pitcher Milt Gaston is quoted as saying, "There isn't a moment's mental rest for a pitcher against that batting order." It sounds like this also will apply to the 2008 Detroit Tigers. I rate this book a solid three stars. It isn't a classic by any means, and I'm sure it wasn't meant to be.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fresh look at an old favorite, November 9, 2007

By 

Ron Kaplan "rksbaseballbookshelf.wordpress.com" (Montclair, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Five OClock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees (Hardcover)

The 1927 New York Yankees assembled perhaps the greatest collection of athletes in history. Frommer, who has made something of a cottage industry out of New York baseball, reaffirms that claim with this latest offering.

The subtitle represents a problem that fans have had for generations. Everyone knows about Ruth, Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and a handful of other regulars. But a team is made up of 25 players, and Frommer gives them all their due. Using team photos from that year, he gives more than a passing glance at the "spear carriers" who fill out the Yankees' roster.

Frommer reports on the games, as the reader witnesses the Yankees building their reputation as the Bronx Bombers; Ruth's 60 home runs were more than the combined totals of most other teams. But the author makes the players more human, more accessible. Gehrig, for instance, endured a two-week slump towards the end of the regular season because he was so distraught over his ailing mother. But Joe Giard, Paul Krichell and Walter Beall? Not exactly household names but Frommer includes their stories, supplementing their contributions on the field with substantial background material, including their lives in post-baseball retirement and a chronological necrology. Such intimate details are unusual in the rough-and-tumble genre of sports books.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Most Everything You Want To Know About The 1927 Yankees, December 1, 2007

By 

Michael L. Slavin "HardBopper" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Five OClock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees (Hardcover)

The author puts together about as much as anyone might want to know about this great team. From the super stars to those who filled out the roster. He recaps the season as well as most of the individual player accomplishments. He even includes the death dates of those participants as well as excerpts from Babe Ruth's final Will and Testament. A good read for anyone interested in this important aspect of baseball history.