Baseball: The Golden Age

After spending a volume dwelling on all the events that took place to at last produce the American and National Leagues as we know them today, Seymour uses the second volume to at focus on the players, profiling the great ones (Cobb, Walter Johnson, etc.) as well as giving interesting factoids about pennant races, teams, managers and players. I'm about half way through and it's been a much faster read than Volume One. Keep in mind, though, that while these are rightfully acclaimed histories of The Game, if you are looking for detailed recollections on a particular pennant race, team, etc., you will need to look elsewhere. This volume covers 1903-1930 in 492 pages. In addition, if you're hoping to use footnotes or endnotes to do deeper research or just to check the source material, you're out of luck. There are none.

I had first read this book during the early 70's when I was Still in my teens,because nostilgia has a way of destorting things this book was not quite as great as I remembered it to be. Nevertheless it is still great a book, for those of us who understand that in History while Wars,Summit Meetings and the like have (and should ) thier place, so should the more ordinary aspects, of our cultural life. The portions of this book that deal with Ty Cobb's insanity and racism Hal Chase's corruption, "Judge Landis's" overated qualties, and the fact that the 1919 World Series scandal was merely a means to an end, rather than the actual cause of the overthrow of The National Commission, for me anyway make for great reading, I would urge anyone intrested in American culture, or just loves baseball/nostilgia to purchase this book here.