Post by amishbonnie on Nov 1, 2009 18:34:23 GMT -5
Nice review of a loyal alum's book in Buffalo News -
Vaccaro offers front-row seat to the 1912 ‘world’s series’
By Jerry Sullivan
NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
November 01, 2009, 6:45 AM / 0 comments
Anyone who loves baseball and writes for a living has imagined what it must have been like to cover the sport a century ago, when it was our unquestioned national pastime and a thriving newspaper industry was the main source of information on the game.
Mike Vaccaro has pulled it off. Vaccaro, a New York Post sports columnist and St. Bonaventure graduate, has traveled back in time to chronicle the forgotten 1912 World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, an event that mesmerized the citizens of two great cities and featured some of the greatest players in the history of the game. Vaccaro, in his afterword, admits there were times during his research when “it was impossible not to feel like you were wearing an old fedora, clacking away at a manual typewriter and listening to paperboys” hawking their wares on street corners.
He puts you there, too. It’s no small feat to re-create a sports event when all the participants and observers are no longer with it. But Vaccaro pulled it off, piecing together old newspaper accounts and interviews with the players, and using literary license to refashion dialogue as it might have occurred in the day.
The 1912 “world’s series” — still a lower-case phenomenon at the time — took place in a roiling political time. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft, a huge (in more ways than one) baseball fan, were engaged in a hot presidential race. Roosevelt was shot in the chest during the series and delivered a 90-minute speech in Milwaukee before seeking treatment for his wounds. John Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston, was a member of the Royal Rooters, a notorious Red Sox fan club that traveled to games with a full band, regaled the team in song and even went down on the field afterward to celebrate victories. Fitzgerald, better known as “Honey Fitz,” was the maternal grandfather of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who carried his name and would later become president.
The “Trial of the Century” was in progress in New York City during that time. Charles Becker, a corrupt city police lieutenant, was accused of murdering one of his underworld associates. The trial competed with the baseball games for space in the New York dailies. Newspapermen exulted in their good fortune and lamented the fact that these two gripping stories couldn’t drag on forever.
Vaccaro contends that the ’12 series was the best ever played. He does a good job of building anticipation for the series, introducing the key players: John McGraw, the proud, feisty Giants manager; Tris Speaker, the great Boston centerfielder who played on a bad ankle; Christy Mathewson, the Giants’ legendary gentleman hurler; Smokey Joe Wood, the young Red Sox pitcher who had the season of his life that year.
The series takes off on its own momentum from there. Vaccaro takes you close. You get a real sense of how close the fans were to the action. The gamblers were close, too. You could feel the money changing hands. You wondered how easy it would be for a player to be on the take. The 1919 Black Sox scandal, remember, was only seven years away.
It was the game that gripped the public, though. Baseball is a game of detail, of skill and happenstance. Like any great series, this one turns on little plays — a muffed fly ball, a base-running blunder, a ball getting stuck in an old outfield fence.
The 1912 series, which was played in the opening season of Fenway Park, went the full eight games. One of the games ended in a tie. There were no lights in those days, either. Play was much swifter, but darkness became an issue. Tens of thousands of fans lined the streets of Boston and New York, waiting for wire service updates to be posted on big scoreboards outside newspaper offices.
As always, money was an issue. Those were the days when the players had no union and the owners had all the power. Baseball’s ruling commission had decided that the players would share in receipts from only the first four games. That was to guard against the possibility that unscrupulous players would throw games to pad their series shares.
In the end, though, it was the Red Sox owner who compromised the integrity of the event. James McAleer ordered his manager, Jake Stahl, to push Wood back a day with the Sox up, three games to one. The Giants won. Wood’s brother had bet on the game, assuming Joe would pitch.
Wood pitched the next game. He laid the ball in and got bombed in the first inning. Red Sox fans were so incensed that Fenway was only half full for the series’ deciding game.
Can you imagine such a thing today, a half-empty stadium for the decisive game of the World Series due to a betting scandal? It was a different time, one that Vaccaro does a splendid job of bringing to life. This book is a treasure for any baseball fan. You’ll feel like reading it in a fedora.
Jerry Sullivan is a News senior sports columnist.
The First Fall Classic By Mike Vaccaro Doubleday 290 Pages, $26.95
Vaccaro offers front-row seat to the 1912 ‘world’s series’
By Jerry Sullivan
NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
November 01, 2009, 6:45 AM / 0 comments
Anyone who loves baseball and writes for a living has imagined what it must have been like to cover the sport a century ago, when it was our unquestioned national pastime and a thriving newspaper industry was the main source of information on the game.
Mike Vaccaro has pulled it off. Vaccaro, a New York Post sports columnist and St. Bonaventure graduate, has traveled back in time to chronicle the forgotten 1912 World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, an event that mesmerized the citizens of two great cities and featured some of the greatest players in the history of the game. Vaccaro, in his afterword, admits there were times during his research when “it was impossible not to feel like you were wearing an old fedora, clacking away at a manual typewriter and listening to paperboys” hawking their wares on street corners.
He puts you there, too. It’s no small feat to re-create a sports event when all the participants and observers are no longer with it. But Vaccaro pulled it off, piecing together old newspaper accounts and interviews with the players, and using literary license to refashion dialogue as it might have occurred in the day.
The 1912 “world’s series” — still a lower-case phenomenon at the time — took place in a roiling political time. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft, a huge (in more ways than one) baseball fan, were engaged in a hot presidential race. Roosevelt was shot in the chest during the series and delivered a 90-minute speech in Milwaukee before seeking treatment for his wounds. John Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston, was a member of the Royal Rooters, a notorious Red Sox fan club that traveled to games with a full band, regaled the team in song and even went down on the field afterward to celebrate victories. Fitzgerald, better known as “Honey Fitz,” was the maternal grandfather of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who carried his name and would later become president.
The “Trial of the Century” was in progress in New York City during that time. Charles Becker, a corrupt city police lieutenant, was accused of murdering one of his underworld associates. The trial competed with the baseball games for space in the New York dailies. Newspapermen exulted in their good fortune and lamented the fact that these two gripping stories couldn’t drag on forever.
Vaccaro contends that the ’12 series was the best ever played. He does a good job of building anticipation for the series, introducing the key players: John McGraw, the proud, feisty Giants manager; Tris Speaker, the great Boston centerfielder who played on a bad ankle; Christy Mathewson, the Giants’ legendary gentleman hurler; Smokey Joe Wood, the young Red Sox pitcher who had the season of his life that year.
The series takes off on its own momentum from there. Vaccaro takes you close. You get a real sense of how close the fans were to the action. The gamblers were close, too. You could feel the money changing hands. You wondered how easy it would be for a player to be on the take. The 1919 Black Sox scandal, remember, was only seven years away.
It was the game that gripped the public, though. Baseball is a game of detail, of skill and happenstance. Like any great series, this one turns on little plays — a muffed fly ball, a base-running blunder, a ball getting stuck in an old outfield fence.
The 1912 series, which was played in the opening season of Fenway Park, went the full eight games. One of the games ended in a tie. There were no lights in those days, either. Play was much swifter, but darkness became an issue. Tens of thousands of fans lined the streets of Boston and New York, waiting for wire service updates to be posted on big scoreboards outside newspaper offices.
As always, money was an issue. Those were the days when the players had no union and the owners had all the power. Baseball’s ruling commission had decided that the players would share in receipts from only the first four games. That was to guard against the possibility that unscrupulous players would throw games to pad their series shares.
In the end, though, it was the Red Sox owner who compromised the integrity of the event. James McAleer ordered his manager, Jake Stahl, to push Wood back a day with the Sox up, three games to one. The Giants won. Wood’s brother had bet on the game, assuming Joe would pitch.
Wood pitched the next game. He laid the ball in and got bombed in the first inning. Red Sox fans were so incensed that Fenway was only half full for the series’ deciding game.
Can you imagine such a thing today, a half-empty stadium for the decisive game of the World Series due to a betting scandal? It was a different time, one that Vaccaro does a splendid job of bringing to life. This book is a treasure for any baseball fan. You’ll feel like reading it in a fedora.
Jerry Sullivan is a News senior sports columnist.
The First Fall Classic By Mike Vaccaro Doubleday 290 Pages, $26.95