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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
"All these were honored in their generation", June 5, 2002
This is one of the greatest books I've ever read and may well be the best non-fiction book I ever read. The book is actually a collection of reminiscences of old-time baseball players compiled by their interviewer, Lawrence Ritter. The original book was written in 1966 with additional chapters added for the revised 1984 version that I read. What comes across first and foremost in all the recollections is the joy and dedication of the long-retired players. At a time when labor strikes, hold-outs and escalating salaries are standard sports stories, this book takes Baseball nostalgia to a new level. It isn't just about the joy of the game, however. This book brings to light a lot of forgotten Baseball history. I fancied myself a bit of a Baseball historian but there were a number of major events in Baseball's early history that I had never heard of before. I think the most memorable was Fred Merkle's "bonehead" play that cost the Giants the pennant in 1907. That was a situation where he forgot to touch second base and thereby cost the Giants the winning run. It is told (and referred to often) with better embelishment than I just gave it but, then, that's the point of my praise; the whole book is a poetic look backwards at the game we sometimes take for granted these days. It's no accident that the best parts of the book are the earliest recollections. You can almost see the corrupting effects of popularity creep up on the game in the 1920's. The stories that these veterans tell and the details that they give make you feel like you've been there yourself. If you're a Baseball fan, you'll love this book. If you're not a Baseball fan, reading this book might just make you one.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
invaluable, March 12, 2001
This is a book that is near and dear to the hearts of most baseball fans, frequently cropping up on lists of the best baseball books of all time. Inspired by the example of Alan Lomax, who recorded old blues singers down South in the 1930's, and motivated by the recent death of Ty Cobb, Lawrence S. Ritter, an economist and New York University professor by trade, spent several years (1961-66) tracking down and interviewing old ballplayers, recording their memories of the game for posterity before they too passed away. The book presents these sessions as extended monologues, alternately amusing, proud, defensive, and wistful recollections of their own careers, of the times they played in, and of the characters they knew. But now, as if the book weren't enough, the tape recordings of the actual interviews are available in audiobook form. Each is introduced by Ritter, who came to know many of the players quite well. And in his introduction, Ritter reveals that it was only years after the project that it occurred to him that one of the things driving him was the death of his own father. Recapturing the memories of the players his father had loved served as a final filial connection. The interviews include those with : "Wahoo" Sam Crawford, "Rube" Marquard, "Chief" Meyers, Hans Lobert, "Smokey" Joe Wood, Davy Jones, Ed Roush, and Fred Snodgrass. The stories they tell range from Hans Lobert racing a horse around the bases while barnstorming through Oxnard, California, to Fred Snodgrass defending his infamous muff; to a first hand account of the beaning death of Ray Chapman at the hands of Carl Mays; and finally a wonderful recital of Casey at the Bat by Chief Meyers. At the end of many of the interviews Ritter asked the old timers if they had any regrets, and not a single man did : of how few professions would this be true ? I can't recommend the book highly enough and even if you've read it several times, be sure to give the audio a listen. This is oral history at its very best and an invaluable resource for baseball fans. It does for all of us what Ritter only belatedly realized it was doing for him, it provides a vital connection to an earlier time, to the world of our fathers and grandfathers. It is truly wonderful. GRADE : A+
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
A Priceless Collection, October 15, 2002
Being a die hard baseball fan, I am always on the look out for great baseball books. And after reading numerous lists of favorite baseball books by Amazon.com readers, it seemed that there was one unanimous choice, The Glory of Their Times, by Lawrence Ritter. And let me say, that I wasn't dissapointed in the least. The beauty of this book is that you feel like you yourself are sitting down with the different players interviewed and having them regale you with stories about playing baseball in the early 20th Century or earlier. The players interviewed are not all household names which adds so much to it. Most of us know the exploits of Cobb and Ruth. Not as many know the stories of Harry Hooper, Wahoo Sam Crawford, and Paul Waner to name just a few. This book is a pleasure to read through and all I can say is thank God that Mr. Ritter wrote this book when he did as all of the players interview here have since passed on I believe. Don't miss this book!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
A Delight, August 24, 2006
The names Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner don't resonate as much as they used to. As the decades go by even the old-timers among us haven't been around long enough to remember them. They've pretty much become historical, iconic figures, like the stoic-looking George Washington on a dollar bill. It's a bit of a sad reminder of the inexorable march of time, but what a great relief to know that this treasure chest of a book is around to keep their memories alive.
The author got the idea for it in 1961 when he read that Ty Cobb had died. Realizing that many of Cobb's contemporaries would soon suffer the same fate, he set out to meet as many of them as he could and record--literally with a tape recorder--their stories for posterity. Twenty six of them are recounted here. Some of these guys are hall-of-famers, some of them not even close, but all of them--every single one--had a load of interesting tidbits to share. Baseball was a different game back then. America was a different place.
The first great thing about the book is that you get at least several takes on the great ballplayers. One of the fellows, for example, playing Detroit, talked about being a little nervous about Cobb, whom they had all heard would sharpen his spikes. A Detroit player, however, mentioned that Cobb never sharpened his spikes. Not that they didn't discourage the other team from thinking so.
Walter Johnson had an arm like a bullwhip, but he was a nice enough guy and a friend of Sam Crawford. Late in the game, if his team was ahead by enough runs, he'd toss a meatball in to Crawford and let him belt it. He never did that for Cobb, though, who he hated. Cobb could never figure out why Crawford was able to hit him.
Honus Wagner is recalled by many as the best of all of them, with great quickness, great hitting and great fielding. A couple of the fellows recall that you could usually count on bits of gravel to be flung at you along with the ball he had just scooped up. Tommy Leach described him as the best fielding third-baseman, shortstop, first-baseman and outfielder in the league--he played all of them--and since he won the batting title eight times between 1900 and 1911 you couldn't really argue that he wasn't the best hitter in the league, either.
For some odd reason, there aren't that many memorable gems about the great Babe Ruth, although there are at least a few. Harry Hooper (a guy I'd never heard of and a hall-of-famer) remembers Ruth in the first year he came up with Boston as a, "big, overgrown, green pea." "Nineteen years old, poorly educated, only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, he was gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over . . . If somebody had predicted that back on the Boston Red Sox in 1914, he would have been thrown into the lunatic asylum."
Along with these detailed sketches, including a ton of characters I haven't even mentioned--Germany Schaeffer, Rube Waddell (who didn't like to wear underwear), Lefty O'Doul, Dazzy Vance--the book is also, naturally, loaded with baseball anecdotes. Some of the more famous plays of the time, for example, are recounted in different ways and with different perceptions.
Take the "Bonehead" Merkle play. For those of you who don't know, what happened was this. The Giants were tied with the Cubs for first place with one week to go in the season. In a game against each other, in the bottom of the ninth of a 1-1 game, the Giants had men on first and third with two outs. Merkle was on first. Birdwell hit a single to center, McCormack scored from third, and Merkle . . . ran to the clubhouse. Without touching second. The Cubs retrieved the ball from center field, Evers tagged second, and the run didn't count. Because of the crowd on the field the game had to be replayed on a later date. The Giants lost it, and lost the pennant. From then on and forever more, Fred Merkle became "Bonehead" Merkle.
But it's actually a little more complicated than that. For one thing, Merkle was only nineteen. It was the first game he'd ever started for the Giants. And running into the clubhouse when the game was over was something all the guys did--whether touching second was necessary or not--because of the crowd pouring onto the field after the ushers opened the gates at the end of the game. The players ran off to get away from them. And Evers never did tag second base with the ball that was hit out to center because someone had heaved it into the left field stands. Fred Snodgrass doesn't think he ever tagged second with any ball at all. The umpires weren't around to know this, though; they had already left the field! Funny how the mists of history tend to simplify things. The detail in this book brings these stories back to life. And there are a ton of them recounted.
Along with all of this baseball lore, you get a pretty good glimpse of America a hundred years ago, too. People were more humble, but in general confident, and much more direct. It's fascinating just to consider their nicknames: "Wee Willie" was the nickname for a short guy, "Specs" was the guy who wore glasses, "Chief," (at least two of them) were American Indians, and, "Dummy" was the guy who was deaf and dumb. Nobody meant anything by it; nobody apparently took offense. Stuff like these speaks volumes.
Here's Jimmy Austin: " . . . they didn't have clubhouses in most parks, especially not for the visiting team. We'd get into uniform at the hotel and ride out to the ball park in a bus drawn by four horses. They used to call it a tally-ho in those days. We'd sit on seats along the sides and ride, in uniform, to the ballpark and back.
"That ride was always a lot of fun. Kids running alongside as we went past, and rotten tomatoes once in a while. Always lots of excitement when the ball club rode by, you know."
Yep. Thanks in part to this book, we know all right.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A Collection Worth Keeping, May 12, 2005
When I was young, I wasn't interested in hearing about the `old times'. Now that I'm older, the old folks are gone and I've missed out hearing their stories forever. In a way, this book is a second chance. Lawrence Ritter has made a Herculean effort tracking down all these players and getting their stories. Baseball fans owe him many thanks for the job he's done. There are many interesting stories told between these pages, but one of the most surprising to me was that these players called the games themselves most of the time. No coaches and the managers sat back and let the players play, for the most part. I especially enjoyed the story by Rube Bressler about three players ending up on third base at the same time. This is a must have collection for baseball fans. I thought "The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told" by Jeff Silverman was a little more entertaining, but this collection held my interest too and is a book worth keeping.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Great history, so-so sound., March 5, 2004
It is awesome to hear the real old-timers talk about baseball's early days. They are old enough to be candid, to be sure. The interviewer does an admirable job of staying in the background, asking prompting questions only when needed and these are show his excellent preparation without making him seem like he's their (baseball) equal.
My only complaint, having heard this on CD (and I did that because I very much wanted to hear their actual voices) was that the audio was not done too well, mostly too faint except on extreme volume settings. Anyway, it was definitely worth the effort.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Truly a "Hall of Fame" book, June 4, 2004
Sometimes the best histories are the ones where the participants in that history are allowed to talk and the history's author just listens. Such is the case with this book. And oh the stories these old ballplayers tell. Stories of an era in baseball from long ago: what it was like to play with Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb or Lou Gehrig; what it was like to play for John Mcgraw; or get a new persepctive on an infamous play like the Fred Snodgrass muff or a dropped ball that led to a World Series win. And funny how you get a sense too from reading this book of what life and the people in it were like back in the early part of the 20th century, as well as what the baseball was like. I was highly entertained and intrigued from the moment I opened the book to reading the last page in it. And I'm thankful the author thought to preserve this era for all of us before it was too late.Dick Dobbins used this "oral history" approach to great advantange in his now out of print book about the old Pacific Coast League called The Grand Minor League. It's an approach I used to a lesser extent some years ago when I wrote a history of a local volunteer group in the late 1990s. I've wanted to read this for years, and I'm glad I did. If this isn't the greatest baseball book of all time, it's pretty darn close.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Baseball's Old Testament, May 26, 2007
Statistically, baseball back then couldn't be more at variance with the game now. Cy Young threw 511 career victories, and 750 complete games. In 1909, Ty Cobb led the majors both in batting average (.377) and home runs (9). Cobb's teammate Sam Crawford hit over 300 triples in his career.
What to make of such numbers? Lawrence S. Ritter's "The Glory Of Their Times" strips away the statistical confusion by getting to the heart of Major League Baseball's early days, the players themselves. An economics professor, Ritter invested his downtime from 1962-66 in interviewing elderly men, baseball players all who knew what it was like to face a Walter Johnson fastball, or have Ty Cobb slide into the base they were covering.
"People were more unique then, more unusual, more different from each other," says Davy Jones, who played on the Tigers with Cobb and Crawford. "Now people are all more or less alike, company men, security minded, conformity - that sort of stuff. In everything, not just baseball."
Transcriptions of Ritter's interviews with Jones and 21 other former players, including Crawford and two others then in the Hall of Fame, makes up the whole of "The Glory Of Their Times," published in 1966 and later extended with four more interviews in 1984. Nearly all the interviews offer both testimony and color for the game as it was then.
Bill Wambsganss tells us about his unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series, and how Ring Lardner once used his last name to rhyme with "clam's chance" and "Ray Chapman's pants". Fred Snodgrass tells us about his famous muffed fly in the 1911 World Series, and how his New York Giants tried to psyche out the Philadelphia Athletics by sitting on the dugout bench, ostentatiously sharpening their spikes.
You hear so much about another famous World Series moment, the Merkle "boner" of 1908, that you feel like you were there on the field, too. There's a Rashomon-like quality to hearing various interviewees give their different takes on such things as th | |
