The Baseball 100

Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100. NY: Avid Reader, 2021.

Near the end of the book, I took an informal poll of coworkers: Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, and Satchel Paige got votes as the best ever; they rank 2, 1, 4, and 10 in Joe's estimation, suggesting that, Family Feud style, he's got a good list. But what is this really about?

The Baseball 100 isn't a history, in the usual sense, though it is Posnanski's story of the sport. It's a list, obviously, purportedly ranking players from all eras against one another (though that's admittedly subjective, almost intended to start arguments). What's it about?  The players -- each essay is a short biography and discussion of the career, a little bit of amazing. Yet each is so much more: the book is a discussion of greatness: what is it, what does it require? It's about relationships, fathers and sons, players and fans, social roles. It's about memory and myth, too, because too many of the best players were excluded from competition, so we have no way to really know how Negro Leaguers compared except what comes down as legend, and the very real loss this unjustified exclusion caused for us all.

And it is, before I've even finished, one of my favorite books.

Oral Histories

Lawrence Ritter, The Glory of Their Times. NY: Macmillan, 1966.
Danny Peary, We Played the Game. NY: Tess, 1994.
John Carmichael, My Greatest Day in Baseball. Lincoln: U.Nebraska, 1996.
Michael Fedo, One Shining Season. NY: Pharos, 1991.
Mike Bryan, Baseball Lives. NY: Pantheon, 1989.

Oral history is about collecting a record of events from the participants, about passing on the important stories, and about creating a shared tradition. Famous examples include Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey -- the “prehistoric” basis of Western literature. These titles don’t go back quite that far, but they are an important part of what creates baseball’s common memory.

The Glory of Their Times is one of my five most important baseball books (the entire list is below). Somehow it wasn’t baseball’s first collection of oral histories; that might have been Carmichael, originally published in 1945. Yet Ritter’s dedication to tracking down the stars of his youth and recording their stories -- largely transcribed as spoken -- struck a chord with the public. In sessions with twenty-two men, all of whom played between 1899, when Wahoo Sam Crawford’s big-league career began, and 1945, when Paul Waner’s ended, he captured stories spanning the game’s history, from before the American League existed through the replacement players of the Second World War. These are the memories of a life in the game, the great plays, players, games, and characters that make the sport so fascinating, as told by the players themselves. Even better, an audio edition is also available, collected from Ritter’s original reel-to-reel recordings, allowing us to actually hear Fred Snodgrass laugh while remembering Victory Faust.

We Played the Game picks up where Ritter left off, with sixty-five players from between 1947 and 1964. This was the period of racial integration and Westward expansion, featuring the Baby Boomers and their heroes: Brooks Robinson, Ralph Kiner, and Don Newcombe are among the stars Peary sought out for interviews.

The eleven men in One Shining Season, however, were not stars: each only had one season in the Major Leagues. Their stories are no less interesting for the short stays, though, and the men perhaps remember more vividly what they did see.

The speakers in Baseball Lives are even more obscure, providing the view from baseball’s back stage. Bryan talks to everyone from the owner to the bus driver; from pitching instructor to orthopedist; player agent, grounds crew, and bat factory employee. This book creates a deep and vibrant backdrop for the game by foregrounding the support that makes our on-field entertainment possible.

These books are My Greatest Day’s legacy. Published in 1945 by collecting columns from among the Chicago Daily News archives, it is full of Hall of Famers remembering their greatest exploits. This one has an “as told to” approach, so it is doubtless heavily edited, but Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Hans Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson -- the entire first Hall of Fame class -- are among the forty-seven stars sharing stories here, describing some of the most famous moments from the game’s early history.

What is most appealing about these books? Each is preserving an individual, personal piece of history and introducing us to a real human who took part in what is, for most of us, as foreign and fantastic an experience as ancient Greece. These stories bring us closer to the game and help us remember that history goes beyond the record of numbers.


Everett's five most important Baseball Books (in alphabetical order)
  Ball Four
  Baseball Before We Knew It
  Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
  The Glory of Their Times
  Maybe I'll Pitch Forever


Honorable Mentions to the Seymours, The Babe Ruth Story, and Moneyball

Hit by Pitch

Molly Lawless, Hit by Pitch.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

This graphic novelization tracks the weirdly parallel lives of Ray Chapman and Carl Mays from their childhoods in Kentucky, thought the fatal collision of Mays' pitch with Chapman's head, and--for Mays, at least, beyond.  The well-researched story is told though vignettes about the main characters, from varying perspectives, and illustrated with figures reminiscent of Eward Gory.  While the story is a bit dark, telling as it does of the only on-field death during a Major League baseball game, it isn't gruesome or violent, and is an important piece of baseball history, presented in a way that is appropriate and enjoyable for anyone eight or older.

Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent

Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent.  NY: Metropolitan, 2013.

Legislative history--the process of determining what a law was intended to mean--is generally very dull stuff: reading memos, committee reports, and testimony transcripts is only fun for the first few hours.  Healy, though, teaches law (at Seton Hall University), so he both knows how to do that sort of research, and how to make the work engaging.

Which is fortunate, because his subject is one of our most important laws: the first amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees our rights of expression, religion, and peaceable assembly.  While this law has been on the books since 1791, it was only in 1919 that we began to understand it as actually limiting the government's ability to prosecute people for what they say.  That we can now disagree openly about government policy or protest against its actions is directly due to a change in the way Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, interpreted the words.

This book, unfortunately, comes too late.  By recounting one judge's evolution, occurring during the high communist paranoia after World War I, Healy shows the importance of this debate--and the importance of standing against governmental tyranny, something sorely lacking in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when fear of terrorism and the resulting Patriot Act chilled discourse; something we still struggle with as the NSA vacuums us every scrap of electronic data; something we traded for a false feeling of security.  Holmes' courage--to change his mind, to stand against the majority, and to support freedom over fear--should stand as an inspiration for us all, and Healy presents it as a readable political thriller.  This should be required reading in high school civics classes.

Larry Lester, Rube Foster in His Time. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.


Not a standard biography, but a documentary history like Dean Sullivan’s Early-Middle-Late-Final Innings series, this portrait of the Negro National League’s founder is not an easy read. While material is presented in an orderly fashion and nicely tied together with clear narrative text, much of it still consists of stilted prose from over a hundred years ago—items transcribed as found in obscure newspapers, court documents, and the other historical source material from which biography is derived.

This approach, while not as easy to read as a pre-digested retelling of a life, has the advantage of showing Andrew Foster as he was seen by his contemporaries—as a truly great pitcher, who threw seven no-hitters (a number equaled by only Nolan Ryan at the Major League level), and an organizational genius who, during a period of intense racial inequality, built and controlled a nation-wide entertainment enterprise through sheer will and perseverance. Lester, editor of the scholarly Negro-Leagues journal Black Ball and CEO of NoirTech Research, has done both us and Foster a service by compiling this material and making possible a fuller understanding of this giant figure in baseball’s development.

John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography

William A. Young, John Tortes “Chief” Meyers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

“Chief” is the head man; it is a title of diffidence. As applied to John Tortes Meyers, All-Star catcher for John McGraw’s New York Giants, it is a fitting title: the Dartmouth-educated Meyers was an outstanding hitter and well-regarded field general who might have made the Hall of Fame if his career had been a bit longer. Yet during his playing days, “Chief” was used as an insult, not a compliment, because Meyers was a Native American, from the Cahuilla tribe.

This well-documented, yet readable, biography naturally focuses on Meyers’ playing career, but also explores his youth in California, the racial insensitivity he and other Natives faced, and his life and career after baseball. While the challenges Jackie Robinson faced in breaking baseball’s color line are well-known, Meyers (and other Natives, like Albert Bender, Jim Thorpe, and Allie Reynolds) faced similar abuse—yet were never excluded from the game, as Blacks were. This volume gives new appreciation for their struggle, while giving one of the Deadball-era’s best catchers much-overdue recognition.

Tom Reiss, The Black Count.

Tom Reiss, The Black Count. NY: Crown, 2012.


This detailed biography of Alex Dumas, father to the author of (and inspiration for the title character in) The Count of Monte Cristo, is the first such effort based on documentary evidence. It recounts the tale of a black man from the Caribbean who rose through the Revolutionary French Army to command three armies before running afoul of Napoleon, in the process relating a now-forgotten ugly aspect of The Little Emperor’s reign: reversing the first anti-slavery laws, which had allowed Dumas to show is skills.

With index, notes, and a detailed bibliography, The Black Count is a thorough and scholarly work, yet Reiss has a very readable, almost conversational tone. The book should be enjoyable for all ages—the story is nearly as exciting as a Dumas-pere novel, and should be a good addition to any public library collection.

Lowell L Blaisdell, Carl Hubbell: A biography of the Screwball King. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

This is an overdue biography of the National League’s best left-handed pitcher of the 1930s—only his American League contemporary Lefty Grove matched his 200 wins in ten years, and Hubbell was elected to the Hall of Fame for his 253 wins over a fifteen year career. Unfortunately, it is also an arm-chair history, based entirely on previously published material. The author did make an effort to contact Hubbell’s descendants, he was unable to speak with anyone from the family, and apparently did not try contacting others who may have known Hubbell personally. While the extensive references Blaisdell provides are appreciated, this leaves him with a one-dimensional portrait of the pitcher; combined with the academic tone of a former history professor, the result is less than easily readable. The book does, however, reminder the aspiring author that passive voice is to be avoided.

Clifton Blue Parker, Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Al Simmons, the cleanup hitter for Connie Mack’s great Athletics clubs of the early 1930s, may be most analogous to more contemporary stars like Dick Allen or Albert Belle: a ferocious hitting talent who achieved greatness—but less of it than expected. In Simmons’ case this is because injuries only let him play as many as 140 games in one season during the second half of his career, though afterwards Simmons admitted that he could have played more and, given how close he got to 3,000 hits, wished that he had.

Parker’s biography is well-documented and easy to read, with a total focus on Simmons as ballplayer. Major personal and world events such as marriage, divorce, and war are mentioned, but mostly to provide context. This emphasis shows us how Simmons was viewed in his era (as the best center fielder in the game) and how he got there, but leaves a much weaker impression of him as a person than last year’s portrait of another Pole in the Hall of Fame, Stan Musial: An American Life. To be fair, though, Simmons died before he was sixty, and Parker give us a solid picture of a worthy and under-appreciated subject as well as a welcome light on an A’s team that, with Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove, may have been better than Babe Ruth’s Yankees.

George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life. New York: Ballantine, 2011.

Stan Musial is easy to overlook. Easy-going, unassuming, and terribly consistent, Musial put together a first-ballot Hall of Fame career over twenty-two years with the St. Louis Cardinals and held seventeen major league records when he retired. But on his special day, a nationally-televised tribute at the 2009 All-Star game in St. Louis, he was over-shadowed by the President, who had come to throw out the first pitch, just as he had been over-shadowed by the flashier greatness of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams while they were playing.

President Obama made amends, though, by awarding Musial the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, making him just the third ballplayer so honored. George Vecsey, the long-time New York Times sports writer, takes another step toward restoring Musial’s prominence with this thoroughly researched and documented official biography, which finally provides Musial a similar literary treatment to his peers.

Almost conversationally readable, Vecsey presents Musial in short, episodic vignettes relating key moments, propelled by an undercurrent of the respect, even awe, for Musial Vecsey developed as a young Dodgers’ fan watching Musial regularly beat his hometown team. Easily readable, this biography is appropriate for readers of any age and stands beside Musial’s memoir The Man’s Own Story as essential reading on one of baseball’s great gentlemen.

Nelson Mandela Foundation with Umlando Wezithombe, Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Comic Book. New York: W.W. Norton &Co, 2009.

Wow.

This is a beautiful book. Full-size pages of glossy stock give it serious heft, and at over 190 pages, it contains what was originally an eight-volume comic series. These were published by Umlando Wezithombe in South Africa, from 2005 - 2007, to make Nelson Mandela’s story accessible to a new generation.

Mandela’s story should be familiar, and it is worthy of super hero treatment. This book, which focuses on themes of tradition, community, and story, is a wonderful introduction to the South African struggle for freedom. And, as Mandela notes in his introductory comments, you are really famous when “you discover that you have become a comic character”. Drawing on many published and archival resources to show us not only Mandela’s role in the South Africans’ fight for equality, more than twenty years in prison, his jubilant release and election as President soon after, the comic also presents key events and relationships throughout his life that help us understand “why”. While not a deeply penetrating biography, we do see Mandela’s life as a whole, not simply a political thing, and can see glimpses of faults which make him appear that much more human. We see it in beautiful pictures with richly muted color.

Mostly, though, we see a strong and gifted man of great pride who refuses to accept an injustice and, in so doing, persuades the world to stand with him against it. We see a hero, triumphant. What better subject for a comic book?

Joe Posnanski, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O’Neil’s America. NY: Wm. Morrow, 2007.

Buck O’Neil was the most graceful man I’ve ever met. Not physically, mind you—it’s hard for a ninety-year old man, even a professional athlete, to move gracefully. No, O’Neil’s grace was internal, a peace, an all-encompassing agape love that let this man, denied so much—a chance to play, or to manage, in the Major Leagues—because of his ‘beautiful tan’, nonetheless call his autobiography I Was Right on Time. “Don’t feel sorry for us,” he said in it. “We had a great time”. That book tells of America’s impact on Buck O’Neil, longtime first baseman and manager of the Negro National League, founder of the Negro Leagues Museum, and star of Ken Burn’s miniseries Baseball. The Soul of Baseball is something else.

In this book, Kansas City sportswriter Posnanski chronicles a year of traveling with O’Neil as he moves across the country telling stories and keeping memories of the Negro Leagues alive during a year when the Hall of Fame held a special election and inducted seventeen neglected players from the Negro Leagues—but not O’Neil [O'Neil was later honored by the HoF when they created a Lifetime Achievement award bearing his name]. This isn’t a biography, though we learn plenty about O’Neil. It isn’t what O’Neil asked for, either, when he approached Posnanski looking for someone to “tell it like it was”. Instead, it is a deeply personal account in which Posnanski is able to capture—or at least reflect—some of the joy that seemed to radiate from O’Neil, some of the stories that otherwise would have been lost. We see an old man refusing to be bitter, spreading an infectious love. O’Neil makes it clear that baseball was great in his day—and is still great, in spite of millionaires, steroids, and the rest of the game’s ills: “The game hasn’t changed,” he would say, “We have”. Like baseball, O’Neil never changed; America did. Calling Buck O’Neil the Soul of Baseball is an incredible complement, but it may still be understated. As presented by Posnanski, O’Neil represented not just the best of baseball, but of all humanity.

Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (2 volumes, 1926) and The War Years (4 volumes, 1939). New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Abraham Lincoln is dead.

After seven years and countless hours of leisurely reading, the six volumes of Carl Sandberg's biography have come to a close. The end is no surprise, but no less painful for its familiarity. Abraham Lincoln, who felt more deeply than most that all men are created equal and, by sheer force of will established this as fact throughout a divided nation, was shot once behind the left ear while attending the theatre on Good Friday and expired at 7.22 the next morning, 15 April 1865, only days after seeing his cause victorious in the worst struggle this country has yet known.

While Sandburg's work is no longer regarded as the definitive Lincoln biography, it is nonetheless an amazing achievement, with two volumes covering Lincoln's childhood and early career in the Army and U.S. House of Representatives, then four devoted to his truncated two-term Presidency. Drawing heavily on primary sources, such as journals kept by members of the Cabinet, speeches, and published materials of the day, Sandburg constructs a detailed picture of the world, and people, Lincoln knew. We see the petty squabbles of cabinet members, the battle plans of generals North and South, the thoughts of Horace Greeley, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher, among others, in their own words. Images, both photographs and reproduced documents, add a further sense of concrete reality to a time which, while only about 150 years past, seems utterly foreign.

Abraham Lincoln is dead; now he belongs to the ages. Sandburg very nearly brings his character to life, but in the end, Lincoln is still dead. Reading six somewhat dry volumes does nothing to change this, but it makes real the man who would not let government of the people, by the people, for the people, perish from the face of this earth.

David Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005.

The Google Story reads like a Hollywood screenplay, with dashing heroes Serge Bren and Larry Page brashly leading a grad-school project from start-up to Microsoft-challenging media monster. Vice and Malseed, who both write for the Washington Post, did over 150 interviews with Google employees, investors, and others who knew the wonder twins. While they have tried to be fair and address all points of view, examine all records, and cover all bases, in the end they have missed a wonderful opportunity. With access like this, good investigative reporters should uncover something interesting about the search engine/ advertising behemoth. Instead, Vice and Malseed give us exactly what Google itself gives us: an aggregation of publicity material. Even the great key to the company, the PageRank algorithm that leads to Google's search results, is reduced to its minimum: "sites with the most links pointing to them, quite simply, were more important than sites with fewer links". While this is the essence of PageRank, rather than examining how or why this is better than its predecessors, much less the other elements of the algorithm, the authors move on to how the wonder twins had to scrounge hardware on the Stanford loading docks for their servers. The massive Google Books project, and the legal questions about scanning millions of copyrighted volumes, is likewise quickly glossed over.

In short, this is a human interest story about a popular company, and as such, it has broad appeal. It does not, however, provide insight into the ways and whys of the ad giant, and is of limited value to professionals. In spite of a final chapter exploring future projects, including investments in alternative energy and genetics research, the authors present no conclusion: no lessons learned, final thoughts, or insights. Can't wait for the movie!