Description
First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Steven Ambrose wrote. . . . Achorn's description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive. --Boston Globe
"A beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time." -- Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian
In 1884 Providence Grays pitcher Charles Old Hoss Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine games--more than anyone in major-league history ever had before, or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series.
Fifty-nine in '84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil War--a brutal, bloody sport played barehanded, the profession of uneducated, hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win.
Wonderfully entertaining, Fifty-nine in '84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating, little-known era of the national pastime.
Author: Edward Achorn
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 03/01/2011
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.41w x 1.08d
ISBN13: 9780061825873
ISBN10: 0061825875
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Sports
- Sports & Recreation | Baseball | History
- Sports & Recreation | History