Download or read book The Black Prince of Baseball written by Donald Dewey and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As America lurched into the twentieth century, its national pastime was afflicted with the same moral malaise that was enveloping the rest of the nation. Players regularly bet on games, games were routinely fixed, and league politics were as dirty as the base paths. Against this backdrop, Hal Chase emerged as one of the game's greatest players and also as one of its most scandalous characters. With charisma and bravado that earned him the nickname The Prince, Chase charmed his way across America, spinning lies in the afternoon, dealing high-stakes poker at night, and gambling with beautiful women until dawn. Most notoriously of all, he undermined his stature as the era's greatest first baseman by conniving with gamblers to fix games and draw teammates into his diamond conspiracies. But as Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella reveal in their groundbreaking biography, The Black Prince of Baseball, Chase was also a scapegoat for baseball notables with hands even dirtier than his. These included league officials who ignored facts in an attempt to pin the 1919 Black Sox scandal on him and--a previously unknown twist--the fabled John McGraw, who perjured himself on a witness stand against the first baseman. Although Chase, contrary to popular belief, was never banned from the major leagues, meticulous research by the authors implicates him in other shady enterprises as well, not least an attempt to blackmail revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. As The Black Prince of Baseball makes clear, in his protean talents and larcenies, Hal Chase personified all the excesses of Ragtime.
Download or read book Hal Chase written by Martin Donell Kohout and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hal Chase is considered by many to be one of the best first basemen ever to play the game of baseball. He was able to make the routine look spectacular, the spectacular look routine. But Chase will never have his plaque in Cooperstown because he has gone down in history as the biggest crook in baseball. Chase was repeatedly accused of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team, and various other crimes, yet with his relaxed nature he always managed to get off the hook for his misdeeds by working his charm. His major league career lasted from 1905 to 1919, and by the mid-1930s he was a destitute alcoholic living off friends. The last fifteen years of Chase's life saw him hospitalized repeatedly for a variety of ailments, living off a sister and brother-in-law who loathed him. This work traces the turbulent life and times of Hal Chase from his humble beginnings to his sad end.
Download or read book Burying the Black Sox written by Gene Carney and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insight on baseball's most famous scandal
Download or read book A Prince at First written by Ed Dinger and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicknamed Prince Hal, first baseman Hal Chase was the first captain of the New York Yankees in the early years of the twentieth century (when the team was known as the Highlanders). Widely regarded as one of the most gifted first basemen ever to play the game, he is also regarded as the most corrupt individual to play. Prince Hal's charismatic personality, however, helped him overcome repeated accusations of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team and various other misbehaviors. At the time of the 1919 World Series fix--the so-called Black Sox scandal--he was thought to have been the mastermind and was banned from organized ball. He died penniless in a state hospital after World War II, the victim of beriberi brought on by years of alcoholism and poor diet. This is a fictional but carefully factual "autobiography." Based on extensive research, it chronicles Chase's many exploits. Even more revealing, it also traces the corruption of the man's soul.
Download or read book The Half Game Pennant of 1908 written by Charles C. Alexander and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-12-19 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1908 American League pennant race was described as a "a fierce and fluctuating fight." With five games left in the season, each of the league's four westernmost teams still had a shot at the championship. It was the height of the Deadball Era, noted for its spectacular pitching, low scoring, quickly played games, and memorable characters. It was also a time when professional baseball truly came into its own as America's national pastime. This lively account details a neglected chapter in the game's history.
Download or read book California Baseball from the Pioneers to the Glory Years written by Chris Goode and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-10-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the 1890s, the book examines the personalities, schools, teams, managers, and owners that helped shape baseball in California. It provides an insightful history of the game from the perspective of the California minor leagues, particularly the California League and Pacific Coast League. While focusing on the lives of a select group of pioneers integral to the sport in the Golden State, it reveals a representative and interesting sample of the achievements, events, and contributions spanning a half-century. Frank Chance, Walter Johnson, Hal Chase, Mike Donlin, Charlie Graham, Hap Hogan, Hen Berry, and Cy Moreing lead teams including Santa Clara College, St. Mary's, the Los Angeles Angels, Stockton Millers, San Jose Prune Pickers, Vernon Tigers, Santa Cruz Sand Crabs, Oakland Oaks, and San Francisco Seals. We begin in San Francisco in 1897 at the genesis of professional baseball in California ' at the San Francisco Examiner Baseball Tournament.
Download or read book Black Sox in the Courtroom written by William F. Lamb and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, non-partisan account of the judicial proceedings spawned by the corruption of the 1919 World Series is badly needed. This book provides it. The narrative of events has been crafted from surviving fragments of the judicial record, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the proceedings, museum archives and, occasionally, the literature of the Black Sox scandal. Preceding the account of judicial events are a brief overview of the baseball gambling problem, a summary of the 1919 Series, and a discussion of post-Series events that presaged revelations of the Series fix. The grand jury proceedings, the criminal trial, and ensuing civil suits initiated by various of the banned players against the White Sox are then recounted in detail, accompanied by copious source citations. The book concludes with a survey of how Black Sox-related legal proceedings have been treated in scandal literature. The book does not purport to be the definitive account of the Black Sox scandal. Rather, it uniquely presents how the matter played out in court.
Download or read book Jackie Robinson He Led the Way written by April Jones Prince and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfect for Black History Month and sports fans! Independent readers will be inspired by the story of this barrier-breaking baseball player. Now available in Step into Reading, the premier leveled reader line. Jackie Robinson became the first black Major League baseball player of the modern era when he stepped onto the field as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947. In simple, engaging language, this book follows Jackie from childhood through his career as an MVP-award winning baseball player and a hero of the civil rights movement. Step 3 Readers feature engaging characters in easy-to-follow plots about popular topics; for children who are ready to read on their own.
Download or read book The Black Prince written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-03-25 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.
Download or read book The Baseball Trust written by Stuart Banner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Baseball Trust is about the origins and persistence of baseball's strange exemption from antitrust law. Told through a frequently riveting and always entertaining history of America's pastime, author Stuart Banner emphasizes the strategies baseball has used to achieve a protected legal status enjoyed by no other industry in America.
Download or read book Johnny Evers written by Dennis Snelling and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-05-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century Johnny Evers has been conjoined with Chicago Cubs teammates Frank Chance and Joe Tinker, thanks to eight lines of verse by a New York columnist. Caricatured as a scrawny, sour man who couldn't hit and who owed his fame to that poem, in truth he was the heartbeat of one of the greatest teams of the 20th century and the fiercest competitor this side of Ty Cobb. Evers was at the center of one of baseball's greatest controversies, a chance event that sealed his stardom and stole a pennant from John McGraw and the New York Giants in 1908. Six years later, following reversals and tragedies that resulted in a nervous breakdown, he made a comeback with the Boston Braves and led that team to the most improbable of championships. Spanning the time from his birth in Troy, New York, to his death less than a year after his election to the Hall of Fame, this is the biography of a man who literally wrote the book about playing second base.
Download or read book Comeback Pitchers written by Lyle Spatz and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 SABR Baseball Research Award Finalist for the 2022 SABR Seymour Medal The careers of pitchers Jack Quinn and Howard Ehmke began in the Deadball Era and peaked in the 1920s. They were teammates for many years, with both the cellar-dwelling Boston Red Sox and later with the world champion Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack. As far back as 1912, when he was just twenty-nine, Quinn was told he was too old to play and on the downward side of his career. Because of his determination, work ethic, outlook on life, and physical conditioning, however, he continued to excel. In his midthirties, then his late thirties, and even into his forties, he overcame the naysayers. At age forty-six he became the oldest pitcher to start a World Series game. When Quinn finally retired in 1933 at fifty, the "Methuselah of the Mound" owned numerous longevity records, some of which he holds to this day. Ehmke, meanwhile, battled arm trouble and poor health through much of his career. Like Quinn, he was dismissed by the experts and from many teams, only to return and excel. He overcame his physical problems by developing new pitches and pitching motions and capped his career with a stunning performance in Game One of the 1929 World Series against the Chicago Cubs, which still ranks among baseball's most memorable games. Connie Mack described it as his greatest day in baseball. Comeback Pitchers is the inspirational story of these two great pitchers with intertwining careers who were repeatedly considered washed up and too old but kept defying the odds and thrilling fans long after most pitchers would have retired.
Download or read book Baseball s Greatest Comeback written by J. Brian Ross and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1914 the Boston Braves experienced the greatest come-from-behind season in baseball history. A perennially woeful team, the Braves rose from the ashes of last place—fifteen games behind on July 4th—to battle in the World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the most dominant teams of all time.Baseball fans witnessed one of sport’s most spectacular comebacks, and Boston’s National League team earned a new designation: “The Miracle Braves.” Baseball’s Greatest Comeback: The Miracle Braves of 1914 follows the Boston Braves through this rollercoaster year, from their miserable start to their inspiring finish. A collection of likeable, determined, and highly unconventional ballplayers, the Braves endeared themselves to fans who rooted enthusiastically for the team. Sitting in last place midway through the season, the youthful group of castoffs and misfits, many of whom had been rejected by other major league teams, followed the lead of Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, Johnny “The Crab” Evers, and George “Big Daddy” Stallingsto turn things around. The Braves battled their way up the standings, finishing the second half of the season with a miraculous 52 and 14 record. They went on to defeat John McGraw’s powerful New York Giants for the pennant and found themselves face-to-face with the talented Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. On the 100th anniversary of this memorable season, the 1914 Boston Braves are still remembered as one of the greatest comeback teams in baseball history. Full of timeless images and memorable characters—including a fanatically superstitious manager, a cheerfully madcap star, and an obsessively driven, yet highly sensitive captain—this book will inform and entertain baseball fans and sports historians alike.
Download or read book Tales from the Deadball Era written by Mark S. Halfon and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Deadball Era (1901û1920) is a baseball fanÆs dream. Hope and despair, innocence and cynicism, and levity and hostility blended then to create an air of excitement, anticipation, and concern for all who entered the confines of a major league ballpark. Cheating for the sake of victory earned respect, corrupt ballplayers fixed games with impunity, and violence plagued the sport. Spectators stormed the field to attack players and umpires, ballplayers charged the stands to pummel hecklers, and physical battles between opposing clubs occurred regularly in a phenomenon known as ôrowdyism.ö At the same time, endearing practices infused baseball with lightheartedness, kindness, and laughter. Fans ran onto the field with baskets of flowers, loving cups, diamond jewelry, gold watches, and cash for their favorite players in the middle of games. Ballplayers volunteered for ôbenefit contestsö to aid fellow big leaguers and the country in times of need. ôJoke gamesö reduced sport to pure theater as outfielders intentionally dropped fly balls, infielders happily booted easy grounders, hurlers tossed soft pitches over the middle of the plate, and umpires ignored the rules. Winning meant nothing, amusement meant everything, and league officials looked the other way. Mark Halfon looks at life in the major leagues in the early 1900s, the careers of John McGraw, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson, and the events that brought about the end of the Deadball Era. He highlights the strategies, underhanded tactics, and bitter battles that defined this storied time in baseball history, while providing detailed insights into the players and teams involved in bringing to a conclusion this remarkable period in baseball history.
Download or read book The Yankees Baseball Reader written by Adam Brunner and published by . This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yankees Baseball Reader brings together the best works of journalism and literature to tell the story of this legendary franchise.
Download or read book Early Exits written by Brian McKenna and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Each story contains an overview of the baseball figure, including career-ending details, and many entries contain background information describing the historical significance of the individual and his or her place within the baseball community."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Quacky Baseball written by Peter Abrahams and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's opening day at the ballpark, and Thumby Duckling is nervous. He hopes it won't be one, two, three strikes, he's out! Trailing by three in the bottom of the ninth, the Webbies are counting on Thumby to save the day. Can Thumby shake his jitters and show his team that he's a star player? From Peter Abrahams and Frank Morrison comes the story of one duck's quest to make it in the big leagues.
