How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game
February 25, 2013
Achorn (Fifty-nine in '84) turns his attention to old-time professional baseball, visiting the nascent days of the American Association, more notably, the American Association that turned baseball into a nationally beloved sport. While the National League packaged the game to the upper-middle-class, the teams of "the Beer and Whiskey Circuit" welcomed everyone. Parks featured alcohol, 25-cent admission, and Sunday games. And the masses loved it. In 1883, the year Achorn recounts, non-top drama accompanied a pennant race. St. Louis Browns owner Chris von der Ahe and manager Ted Sullivan butted heads like George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. The Browns' competitor, the desperate Philadelphia Athletics, signed a pitcher who literally jumped as he threw. Achorn examines the wear and tear of baseball's early days while mixing in profiles of the rascals and renegades whose roles range from the historic (Fleet Walker, who in 1884 became the first African American to play professionally) to the colorful (slugger Pete Browning, who upon hearing that President Garfield had died asked, "What position did he play?"). Overall, this is a comprehensive and entertaining history of baseball's overlooked early years.
February 15, 2013
Achorn (Providence Journal; Fifty-Nine in '84) takes us back to when base ball was expressed in two words and one league--until the American Association was founded in 1882. One of its founders was German immigrant Chris Von der Ahe, whose biography is woven through this narrative. Von der Ahe made his fortune in St. Louis catering to other German immigrants with his saloon and beer garden. To increase his beer profits, he purchased the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1882 and revolutionized the presentation of professional baseball: Sunday games; beer sold at the stadium. The American Association folded in 1891, with four of its teams joining the National League. (The American League was not founded until 1901.) Achorn proposes Von der Ahe as the precursor to baseball entrepreneurs Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck, but Von der Ahe died broke, back in a saloon, tending bar. VERDICT An enjoyable book that reinforces how baseball has evolved thanks to America's immigrants. Recommended, although those owning J. Thomas Hetrick's Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns may consider it optional.--MH
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 1, 2013
An accomplished baseball historian reminds us when a go-ahead Western city and an upstart league turned the country "base ball mad!" Only 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, professional baseball had already been around long enough for corruption scandals to have almost killed it. To compete with the staid and stained National League, the newly formed American Association slashed ticket prices and offered beer sales and Sunday baseball to appeal to immigrants and the working class. These innovations, plus a rough-and-ready brand of ball, spiffy uniforms, and remodeled and well-regulated ballparks, all helped to set new attendance records and smooth baseball's entry into the 20th century as America's national pastime. Providence Journal deputy editorial pages editor Achorn (Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had, 2010, etc.) tracks the hard-fought 1883 pennant race, focusing particularly on the St. Louis Browns--the first iteration of today's Cardinals--and their mercurial, Steinbrenner-esque owner, Chris Von der Ahe. Among many colorful characters, the Browns featured the young Charlie Comiskey (who'd have his own brush with scandal as owner of the 1919 Black Sox), manager "Ted" Sullivan, who first used "fanatics" to describe the game's passionate supporters, and Arlie Latham, whose swift base running led his language-challenged owner to exclaim that he could run "like a cantelope." Achorn mixes in stories about other league standouts: the doughty pitcher for the eventual champion Philadelphia Athletics, Bobby Matthews; their minstrel performer turned owner, Lew Simmons; their Yale man, Jumping Jack Jones, whose unorthodox delivery baffled hitters; and Louisville's Pete "the Prince of Bourbon" Browning, whose bespoke bat made apprentice woodworker Bud Hillerich wealthy. Scheming owners, rampant racism, hard-drinking players, beleaguered umpires, crazed spectators and lurking gamblers--all these were also part of the league and of Achorn's unblinking but still admiring presentation. A thoroughly enjoyable re-creation of the gusto, guts, glory and grime of the game's early days.
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