Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (Paperback)

by Cait N. Murphy (Author)
Key Phrases: pennant race, New York, World Series, Polo Grounds (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. It's been almost a century since the loopy shenanigans of 1908 that produced what Fortune magazine editor Cait Murphy calls "the year that baseball comes of age," but the resultant drama has hardly faded with time. Although baseball books tend to sag with nostalgia, Murphy's wisecracking yarn digs right into the era's brawling, vivid ugliness with little regard for such niceties, and is all the better for it. Her book is so rife with corruption, greed, stupidity and downright weirdness that it makes today's sport of sanctimony and clean behavior look positively sleepy in comparison. This isn't surprising, given that 1908 was not just the last year that the shockingly victorious Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series, but also the year when a game would be called a tie through sheer Rashomon-like confusion and when a game day riot would take the lives of two people. The titanic matches between the rival Cubs and New York Giants are thrilling enough, but what really makes Murphy's book an addictive pleasure is the joy the author takes in the colorful asides where she fills in the chaotic blanks of an America discovering not just the joy of its national pastime but its very character. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Fans knew they were seeing the end of a marvelous season when they watched the Cubs claim the National League pennant by defeating the New York Giants on October 8, 1908. But with the advantage of historical perspective, Murphy recognizes that the '08 fans actually witnessed baseball's decisive turn toward modernity. In a tale peopled with colorful characters--including the regal Christy Mathewson and the boozy Hal Chase--Murphy unfolds the formative events of this frenetic year. Readers will relish the infamous "Merkle game"--a game apparently won by the Giants, but later declared a tie because of a base-running blunder. Almost as riveting is the season-ending replay of the controversial tie, a replay that so aroused fans that some snuck into the game through the sewers, and many stayed to assault the victorious visitors. A writer of exceptional verve when recounting the heroics of the diamond, Murphy evinces a shrewd intelligence when scanning the cultural forces remaking the world beyond the ballpark. She unravels the malign dynamics behind Ty Cobb's violence against blacks, and she limns the parallels between early-twentieth-century anxieties about immigrant anarchists and twenty-first-century fears of foreign terrorists. A book that will long claim the attention of serious sports enthusiasts. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060889381
• ISBN-13: 978-0060889388
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #106,001 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #70 in

  Books > Sports > Baseball > History

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take me out to 1908, May 19, 2007

By	Richard E. Hourula (Berkeley, CA. United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (Hardcover)

Baseball fans who are also fans of baseball history are always on the lookout for books that flesh out familiar stories from the game's past. There are a plethora of baseball non fiction books that merely put a spit shine on eras, teams and players of bygone days, adding nothing to our understanding or appreciation. Then along comes a book like "Crazy '08" by Cait Murphy a work that not only adds new dimensions to the wild and whacky story of the 1908 NL pennant race but sheds a bright shining light on a time in American history.
Yes "Crazy '08" is replete with colorful baseball characters ranging from irascible Giant Manager John McGraw, to rambunctious Cub shortstop Johnny Evers to the magnificent Honus Wagner. Of course the infamous Merkle game is the centerpiece of this luscious feast. And truly baseball as it was played 100 years ago (the same basic rules, quite a different etiquette) is the time period. Author Murphy hits a home run in relating all these facets. But her real feat is all the stories, teams, players, managers, owners, umpires and other assorted supporting cast that she fits comfortably and indispensably into this epic tale (an epic that clocks in at a mere 384 pages no less!).
And that's the baseball stuff! Totally within context of this history of a seminal baseball season, she includes tales of an obese Chicago mass murderess, anarchists, coal mines, race riots and more.
1908 is remembered for the dramatic three-team National League pennant race between the New York Giants, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates that wasn't decided until the season's last day and then one. This added affair came about because a seeming Giant victory over the hated Cubs late in the season had to be replayed due to what has famously become known as Merkle's Boner -- the base running faux pas of a Giant rookie. The resulting controversy epitomizes the roles of those "Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates" mentioned in the book's subtitle.
Murphy is nothing if not the Honus Wagner of researching which is all well and good but can she write? Boy howdy! The woman's style is so breezy the pages will flap by on their own if you don't hold `em down.
A student of baseball history? Step right up and read "Crazy 08." A casual fan? You'll love it just as well. Hell, if you're just interested in turn-of-the-century Americana or want a good read, "Crazy '08" comes highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A detailed look at one baseball season, October 5, 2007

By	Steven A. Peterson (Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL)) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History (Hardcover)

Cait Murphy observes that 1908 is an important season in the history of baseball in America. She closes the book with the statement (page 288): "In the sweep of baseball's history, 1908 is not the end of an era, nor the beginning of one. It is, however, the end of the beginning." She starts the work by answering why she explores 1908 (page xiii): "The best season in baseball history id 1908. Besides two agonizing pennant races, it features history's finest pitching duel, hurled in the white heat of an October stretch drive, and the most controversial game ever played." I'm not sure that I buy 1908 as the apogee of baseball; however, Murphy does make a nice case.

The book begins with some context, looking at the earlier years of the National League and American League just after the turn of the century. She also looks at the evolution of gloves and bats and the other artifacts of the game. There are glimpses of stadia of the time.

Also nicely done are the character sketches of some key figures from 1908--from Manager John McGraw of the Giants to John Evers and Frank ("Husk" or "The Peerless Leader") Chance of the Cubs to Honus Wagner and so on. The book takes a chronological look at the season thereafter, from opening day through the great replay of the tie game (when Fred Merkle didn't touch second base, leading to a tie score) to a brief afterword on the World Series (not much time spent on it, since it was a blowout, with the Cubs winning their last World Series over the Detroit Tigers).

Some interesting tidbits are scattered throughout: the seemingly large number of players who committed suicide (pages 66-67), the amazing variety of interests of Cubs' players on one train trip (if accurately portrayed by a reporter)--"Doc" Marshall reading a book on dentistry, Johnny Evers reading a biography of Savonarola, two players discussed how to raise alfalfa, Ed Reulbach reading a chemistry book, five playing poker, and so on.

There is the portrayal of some of the great moments of the season, for instance, Young Fred Merkle not touching second base after an apparent game-winning hit against the detested Cubs (pages 189-191).

There are also several "time-out" inserts that provide interesting side-bar discussions. One of these looks at Chicago and its bawdy politics of the early 1900s; another examines the howler that Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball. An Epilogue briefly describes what happened to key players after the 1908 season, including Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown (there is a picture of his misshapen hand in the volume, suggesting how he might have created interesting movement on his pitches), Frank Chance, Hal Chase, Fred Merkle, "Cy" Young, and so on.

All in all, a nice detailed view of a fascinating season in baseball history.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the greatest season (or baseball book)..., April 22, 2008

By	W. Dobson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

CRAZY `08 is a lot of fun but it's also a disappointment. This is the story of the 1908 baseball season which the author sets out to prove was the greatest season in baseball history. The book is full of color and does a good job of setting forth some of the colorful characters of the time but by page one hundred all those tales of fighting and cheating are rather redundant and, sadly, sometimes boring as well.

One of the key faults of CRAZY '08 is that the author has chosen to pretty much ignore the American League thus denying the reader access to some of the most interesting characters in baseball history such as Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Joe Jackson. Obviously giving the American League equal time with the National could have resulted in a much longer book but it need not be so if the author had simply cut some of the redundancy.

What the author does well is to give the reader a good feeling for baseball in the early twentieth century, a time when it was populated by farm boys and college men, by scoundrels and dullards with the odd (and I do mean odd!) genius tossed in. One of the most interesting portions of the book talks about early ballparks and their tendency to burn down told in the context of a time when small wooden structures were beginning to be replaced by the palaces that would serve as the setting for the next fifty years of baseball. The author also includes a few sections, called timeouts, that attempt to put baseball into the context of the time, unfortunately here too the author seems to prefer colorful stories over actually placing the game into a broader historical and cultural context.

What CRAZY '08 does not do is prove it's basic premise that 1908 was the greatest season in baseball history. I think most baseball fans will agree that the greatest seasons have more to offer then a tight pennant race, they include great personal achievements such as the 1961 home run race between Mantle and Maris or the 1941 season that featured both Ted Williams' .400 season and Joe DiMaggio's fifty-six game hitting streak. Most readers will personally remember the amazing 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa which some have said helped put baseball back on track following the messy labor problems of 1994 and 1995 as perhaps the greatest season of their lives even if the no one remembers the pennant races. For most people it's these compelling personal dramas that set great seasons apart rather then simply tight pennant races.

The book is also a bit dry at times as it's source material is all third person. Ms. Murphy has done a fine job researching old newspaper accounts and tracking down books of the period that the average person simply has no access to and distilling the hyperbole down to a reasonably straight forward mix of fact and legend. What's missing is the human voice, CRAZY '08 could have benefited greatly by including interview material from the players families and baseball and cultural historians. At times it's rather like listening to a ball game play-by-play wit out a color analyst.

I recommend CRAZY '08 as an introduction to a long ago and very different baseball world then we know today. It's good fun, educational and at times very absorbing even if it's basic premise goes unproven. I still prefer the immortal THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES which, more then forty years after it's publication, remains the standard against which all other books about the early days of baseball will forever be judged.