Hoopla

Hoopla was the most satisfying baseball novel I have ever read. There are two main characters and they take turns writing chapters. The first is fictitious sportswriter, Luther Pond looking back at his career from the perspective of the 1970s. The other character is real-life Black Sox player, Buck Weaver and his experiences in baseball before and after the scandal that rocked baseball. The book is billed as a novel about the Black Sox, but it's not just an account of that season, but a reflection of the careers of two men who wound up in the middle of that notorious event. Luther Pond begins his story as a cub reporter covering the famous boxer, John L. Sullivan, who himself is covering a big boxing match featuring the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. Pond learns that Sullivan is now fat and alcoholic and doesn't even write his own copy for the newspaper. Pond goes on to demolish the legend of other athletes too by digging into Ty Cobb's past and uncovering information that suggests he also had his hand in fixing ballgames. Buck Weaver is portrayed as a young cocky player who passivity gets him caught up in situations not of his making. Ultimately it gets him kicked out of baseball. What really made the book work for me is that Stein writes with a style that is somewhere between Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon, two men who were both sportswriters at this time, but would later go on to greater glory through their fiction. For me that style captures the time as well as the story.Some books you enjoy all the way through and some you enjoy more in reflection. Hoopla is definitely one you'll enjoy all the way to the finish.

I've been reading all the materials I can possibly track down on the 1919 World Series, the Black Sox, and Buck Weaver for some time and this book rates with the best of them. Hoopla is a timeline, recording the thoughts and memories of one of the Black Sox most prominent figures; George "Buck" Weaver, and intertwines them with the ficticious actions of the author. The chapters written by Weaver brought more realization to the events surrounding the 1919 World Series than any other material I've discovered. Buck writes with a humorous slang and much emotion as he describes a turn of events from his first days in the big leagues through the 1921 decision to ban him for life. Stein's fictional character also adds depth to this period of time lending a sports writers perception to the storyline. The 1919 World Series in all its fascination has been described a million times over, but to read it straight from the horses mouth gives it pure life. Anyone interested in this time period and or the events I've mentioned should sincerely enjoy this awesome book.

This rollicking novel of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal is a sort of hybrid of Ragtime, Eight Men Out & You Know Me, Al. Luther Pond, a sportswriter for William Randolph Hearst's New York Morning Journal, shares the narration with "Buck" Weaver. Between them they weave a tale that intersperses portraits of John L. Sullivan, Ty Cobb, Hearst, George M. Cohan, etc. (here's a description of Cobb: "watching him play, it was possible to speculate, in defiance of logic, that winning was not his only concern; that Ty Cobb was consumed by another, more primitive objective: to annihilate the egos of other men" ) with the story of how eight players on the best team in baseball came to participate in a scheme to lose a World Series.For anyone who knows the story of the Black Sox, much of the book will be familiar, but there are some nice set pieces--especially the Jeffries/Johnson fight-- & the world of newspapering & Yellow Journalism is as much a focus of the story as baseball.GRADE: B+Also recommended, by Harry Stein: -How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace) (2000) (Grade: A-)

A really well written book on baseball and life. Nice job

While this book is based on the happenings in 1919 the portrayal of the players implicated does not do them justice. But on the whole this is an excellent book that gives the basis of the scandal, but character wise it is very uncomplimentary to many of the characters particularly "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. I recommend this book to anyone who knows anything about the black sox scandal.