The Glory Of Their Times

[FirstTimer]

Finally was able to dive into this book a bit last night.

Read the first two stories. Awesome stuff about Rube Marquard trading himself to Brooklyn in all of 10 minutes over the phone.

Oh yeah, Bill James, Rube Marquard has a message for you:


It was also interesting reading the Tommy Leach stuff and how much of it was put into the Ken Burns documentary Baseball, some paragraphs word for word. Also Leach talking about how baseball in his day was more exciting brand of baseball because of more triples and inside the park homeruns.

[FirstTimer]

This is my bed side reading book. Got away from it a bit Ias I got hooked on James' Historical Abstract and tore through that.

A player last night had the name/nickname "Nig".


Haven't gotten to the Merkle's Boner stuff yet. Just read the chapters from the two Detroit Tigers players, Davy Jones and Sam Crawford. Davy Jones' story was awesome. Jumped leagues like twice. HS g/f broke up with him when he became a ballplayer...both married different people...met years later after both being widowed....married each other. Ty Cobb was an ass....all stemming from massive insecurities..and Walter Johnson is pretty much universally seen as the best pitcher. Honus Wagner as the best player.

The Sam Crawford story about Walter Johnson grooving him pitches in blowouts because they were friends was pretty cool too.

[Berowsk]

You also have to love the non PC attitude of the day...every southern player was called "Rube", every deaf player was called "Dummy", and seemingly every team had an indian catcher named "Chief". Mordecai Brown had three fingers on his hand, so of course he became...Three Finger Brown. This simplicity and disregard for sensativity is refreshing.

Just like VSN!!!

[dell71]

Sucks that I just saw this thread today. Gotta get my hands on this.

[dell71]

Just finished reading this - very entertaining and insightful. Amazing the recall these guys had, 40 to 60 years after the fact for most of their stories. Not only did they remember events perfectly or even their own stats, but stats of the guys they played with. Best part to me is how a lot of these guys wound up playing big league ball: "So & so happened to be in my town and asked if anybody knew a good catcher (or whatever)". The Paul Waner version of this is my favorite. A scout recommends Waner to his team without ever having seen him play because he needed an excuse to explain why he'd be gone for so long. Truthfully, he'd been on an alcoholic bender for 10 days and only heard about Waner through a random conversation with the train conductor who's sister Waner happened to be dating at the time.

[FedEx227]

Did you double check their stats? Old baseball guys are notorious for saying blank hit blank home runs on this day and sounding like they know exactly it went down, then you fact check and the guy hit one homer or something.

[dell71]

Didn't double-check their stats. I regarded it more as a stroll down memory lane for these guys, not a fact finding mission. I might dig a little deeper at some point, just not yet. Enjoyed the stories too much to start trying to disprove them. Still, there are a number of places where the author makes notes validating what these guys have said.

[FedEx227]

Not trying to say it's crap, it's just something I hear all too often from Hawk Harrelson on Sox games.

I remember on July 27th when Ted Williams hit 4 home runs in this stadium, never seen a game that good in Kansas City. Then you find he never hit more than a single home run ever in Kansas City. Just funny stuff like that, not a huge deal.

[FirstTimer]

Not trying to say it's crap, it's just something I hear all too often from Hawk Harrelson on Sox games.

I remember on July 27th when Ted Williams hit 4 home runs in this stadium, never seen a game that good in Kansas City. Then you find he never hit more than a single home run ever in Kansas City. Just funny stuff like that, not a huge deal.

The writer of the book fact checked everything. He talks about that in the intro to the book.

[dell71]

^Forgot about that. Been a while since I read the intro. (could mostly only find time to read during lunch time, lately)

[FedEx227]

Good to know. I have the book, haven't started on it yet and want to make sure I'm not hearing a bunch of BS.

[FirstTimer]

The writer could be full of shit but he says he checked the claims out.

Who knows.

OLDE TYMEY BASEBALL!

[FedEx227]

Like when you hear negro leaguers talk about Cool Papa Bell.

"I once saw Cool Papa Bell tag up from first on a pop fly to the pitcher"

...No, no you didn't.

[dell71]

Like when you hear negro leaguers talk about Cool Papa Bell.

"I once saw Cool Papa Bell tag up from first on a pop fly to the pitcher"

...No, no you didn't.

There is some of that (especially when any one of them talked about how hard Walter Johnson threw), but there is bound to be when trying to describe how great you think someone is. That helps makes the stories interesting to read. But when talking about specific events these guys' recall seemed dead on, for the most part. The way I figure that is the whole book is a series of interviews conducted separately over a couple of years, across the country wherever these players were living in the mid 1960s and damn if they didn't talk about a lot of the same events with the same details (who was pitching, who was on base, how many outs, strikes, etc). With regards to stats, like I said it wouldn't be just their own, but it would be like what they hit, how many runs they drove in and the same for the guy that played next to them. One day I may go back to it just to double-check those numbers but at the same time it's a book about stories not stats.