Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-From-Behind Ball Club Won the Wor

Baseball in times long passed was a very different game, but like today there were some really wild characters to mke the game all the more interesting. The 1934 Cardinals, "The Gashouse Gang" were an exciting, odd collection of great ball payers who played for the love of the game in a way we wish today's players did. If you love baseball you won't be able to put this down, and even if you don't it will be too intriquing to stop reading once you start. Well written, well researched and as entertaining as anything I've read this season. Highly reccommended!

This book climbs to the top wrung of my baseball ladder. Rather than a statistical or play-by-play book so common in baseball pages, this features personality development of some of the wackiest players of all time. Learn that Ducky Joe should have been Mean Joe, that Leo the Lip couldn't handle relationships, or that Dizzy Dean was really Jerome or Jay or Hanna or Herman, maybe that he was from Arkansas or Oklahoma or Texas -- well, you get it. This book captures the thrill of a season and the joy of a team effort. It really makes you think of the Oakland Athletics of the Catfish days. Just one observation: John Heidenry missed the point of the moniker, "Gashouse Gang." He can't figure out where it came from. He even ponders how "Gas Tank" became "Gashouse." During that day, electricity was provided by manufactured gas plants, sometimes called "witch's brew." The main structure was known as the "gashouse." The working class fellows who toiled away in those dirty gashouses were known as "the gashouse gangs." They cursed, they played dirty and hilarious tricks on each other, they had great and sour dispositions -- necessary to get through the tough days, and yes, their clothes were always filthy. Sound like the beloved Gashouse Gang? Snag this book, and you will enjoy several hours of quiet time, if you can block out your own laughter.

In baseball, 1934 was a year to remember, a year in which the Saint Louis Cardinals, a scruffy team of misfits and malcontents, came from almost the graveyard to win the National League pennant, and then the World Series. While we learn a tremendous amount about the Cardinals, and especially the Dean brothers, Dizzy and Paul, there are others about whom we receive thumbnail biographies. Most importantly, Branch Rickey is focused upon for much of the early part of the book, and just reading about this remarkable man is sufficient reason to study this book. Other famous players make cameo appearances: Babe Ruth, Mel Otto, Mickey Cochrane, Leo Durocher, and Pie Traynor, with whom I was once priviledged to have an extensive conversation about baseball when I was in college. I also remember listening to Dizzy on the television announcing(?) games and talking about all kinds of extraneous subjects other than the game he was supposed to be calling. Of course, Dizzy is the centerpiece of this book, and he strides through it like a colossus. He did things then that would not be tolerated by a basseball organization today, and perhaps we are the pooorer for not having men such as him (and Curt Flood)to challenge what is considered the "right" way to act as a porfessional ball player. He's gone, and so are all of those famous old-timers, and the world misses them!

I gave this book to my 60 year old father for Father's Day. He hasn't read a book in years but is a huge baseball fan. He loved the book and stayed up late into the night reading it. Great for a Cardinals or baseball fan!

Just finished The Gashouse Gang, by John Heidenry, and I'd highly recommend it. I greatly enjoyed this book. This is a fun, easy book to read that covered the 1934 pennant race and World Series - with Dizzy Dean as the centerpiece of the book. What makes the book such a joy to read is that the author refrains from going into excruciatingly minute detail of the 1934 baseball season - as many period authors do with a lot of information that you can never hope to retain - but rather presents it all as a interesting backdrop to the improbable cast of characters that made up the Gashouse Gang, including, among many others, the Dean brothers, Leo Durocher, Frankie Frisch, Pepper Martin, Joe "Ducky" Medwick and Rip Collins. He includes just enough relevant detail about the pennant race without the book ever becoming boring and devotes most of his efforts to developing all the zany personalities and all the many interesting baseball interactions and relationships. A lot of space is devoted to Branch Rickey and how he put this team of characters together and actually made it work. There's a lot of "local color" and 1930's "baseball flavor" that I really enjoyed. By the end, you really feel that you know the personalities of this group of talented players and what made the Gashouse Gang click as an exciting, one-of-a-kind championship team. A lot of the information in the book will be familiar territory to baseball fans, but the author presents it all in such a lighthearted, engaging writing style that it kept me turning the pages. It was one of the few books I've read that I was disappointed when it ended. I've read other books about Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang, but this was easily the most enjoyable. If you want to brush up on this era in baseball history - a time when Dizzy Dean and the St. Louis Cardinals were on top of the baseball world - this is the book for you!