Misfits! Baseball's Worst Ever Team [Paperback]

J. Thomas Hetrick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 24, 2001

The tragicomic story of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, baseball's futility leaders and winners of only 20 out of 154 games that season. Meet some of the most colorful players ever to appear in a boxscore -- men like Crazy Schmit, Louis Sockalexis, Tommy Tucker, Harry Colliflower, Joe Quinn, Tommy Dowd, and Ossee Schreckengost. Follow their bumpy train-travel odyssey through the National League and straight into obscurity. Marvel at the real desperation of a team that didn't play home games and were forced to turn a cigar store clerk into a starting pitcher. Baseball fans will laugh out loud at the hilarious anecdotes within. (Formerly titled "MISFITS! The Cleveland Spiders in 1899")

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...they played under more aliases than John Gotti -- Misfits, Outcasts, Leftovers, and those are only the polite ones." -- The News, Southbridge, Massachusetts

"Hetrick deserves a standing ovation for this meticulous research." -- The Cooperstown Review

"The team that does strange things." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1899

About the Author

J. Thomas Hetrick cut his teeth on the Washington Senators' teams of the late 1960s and through 1971, when the club moved to the wilds of Texas. A serious fan of "bad baseball" teams, Hetrick celebrates those nonentities through his writing and research. He's also the author of "Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns" from Scarecrow Press. That book was a finalist for the Seymour Medal, given the best book of baseball history or biography in a year.

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Pocol Press (December 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 192976300X
• ISBN-13: 978-1929763009
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,369,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks Tom Hetrick for bringing Misfits back to life, February 5, 2002

By 

Brian Ames (St. Charles County, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Misfits! Baseball's Worst Ever Team (Paperback)

If they give PhDs in the history of America's sport, Tom Hetrick should get one. MISFITS! Baseball's Worst Team Ever is the most thoroughly researched and well-chronicled book about baseball I've ever read. Hetrick is deft in several ways that make this book work - weaving anecdotes, press clippings and an unwavering chronology into a story so poignant in its haplessness that it becomes heroic. They become heroes, those Cleveland Spiders of a hundred and three seasons ago! There are several reasons why this book works: First, I enjoyed Hetrick's diversity of names and descriptions for the constituent parts of the game. How many different ways can you say, "struck out," or "pitched," or "caught a fly ball," in a narrative that demands it hundreds of times? An example, said of a struggling Spider pitcher: he was "offering up fat peaches to smash around the ballyard." Pure poetry. Secondly, the droll excerpts from rags of the day - in many cases the Cleveland Plain Dealer - whose clips still sting a century later, yet resonate in a strangely humorous way. "The home team worked hard to find a way not to win," is typical of the sports writing of the day, and it's hilarious. But thirdly, and mostly, Hetrick has made something to celebrate out of this great disaster of a sports club. What must have been unremittingly ugly in its day - this unlikely accretion of hooligans and miscreants and its 20-134 record - means that in another place, at another time, you and I, Joe Sixpacks, could play pro ball. Read this book, and welcome to The Show. Thank you, Dr. Hetrick, for exhuming the Spiders.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delight for Both Devout and Fair-Weather Fans Alike, July 28, 2004

By 

Jeffrey B. Burton - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Misfits! Baseball's Worst Ever Team (Paperback)

Misfits is one delicious Bratwurst of a book, heaped high with rich characterizations and topped with juicy anecdotes. It's a cure for those whose favorite team is having a slump...because no one's ever had a slump like the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Author Hetrick's enthusiasm for the subject is only surpassed by his exhaustive research. He walks the reader through the Cleveland Spiders' hilariously awful season (chapter titles follow the team month by painful month, for example, "May, And Still They Lose"). Hetrick has scoured the papers and journals of that era and includes numerous quotes about the team. My favorite comes from the May 13th, 1899 issue of The Sporting News, "The players are doing the best they can and only ask that the spectators use no fire arms."