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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570922
EAN num: 9780688112738
ISBN number: 0688112730
Label: Harper Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: March 19, 1992
Publishing house: Harper Paperbacks
Release Date: March 19, 1992
Sale Popularity Level: 21776
Studio: Harper Paperbacks
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Amazon.com:
The voices of the game's distant past continue to reverberate with a distinct freshness in Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times. An oral history of the game in the very first two decades of the century, Glory sends out its impressive roster of players to tell their own stories, and what stories they tell--the story of their times as well as of their game; the scorecard includes Rube Marquard, Babe Herman, Stan Coveleski, Smoky Joe Wood, and Wahoo Sam Crawford. A delight from cover to cover, Glory is the subsequent best thing to having been there in the days when the ball may have been dead, but the personalities were anything but.
Product Description:
The Story of the
Early Days of Baseball
Told by the Men Who
Played It
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I really enjoyed listening to the stories from some of our classic baseball heros. They brough history to life. This audio book was one of the best purchases I've made. I truly enjoyed just listening to these remarkable men tell there own stories of baseball's past.
Rated by buyers -
I have been an avid reader of baseball history for most of my life and I very first purchased this book in the 80's and wore it out and purchased another copy. There isn't a season that goes by that I don't read it again. When you read the interviews of the ballplayers, recorded by Lawrence Ritter, it's as if you are a fly on the wall hearing the conversations very first hand and the ghosts of seasons long past are brought back to life.
You get a very first person account of some of the most famous moments in early baseball history through the fond recollections of some of the participants. Merkle's boner, Snodgrass' muff, Wambsgan's unassisted World Series Triple play are all recounted. The most entertaining parts of the book recount tales of Germany Schaefer stealing very first base, the chronicles of Charles Victory Faust, and Wilbert Robinson attempting to catch a grapefruit dropped from an airplane. You get a glimpse of Ty Cobb from his teammates Davy Jones and Sam Crawford. You get several different takes on the great manager John McGraw from several different players who once played for him.
This is hands down the greatest sports book I have read. It's not only a great history of the early days of 20th century baseball but a wonderful piece of Americana. The book breaths humanity and paints a portrait of the ballplayers of the past who played for the love of the game unsullied by steroids and multimillion dollar contracts.
Rated by buyers -
Statistically, baseball back then couldn't be more at variance with the game now. Cy Young threw 511 career victories, and 750 complete games. In 1909, Ty Cobb led the majors both in batting average (.377) and home runs (9). Cobb's teammate Sam Crawford hit over 300 triples in his career.
What to make of such numbers? Lawrence S. Ritter's "The Glory Of Their Times" strips away the statistical confusion by getting to the heart of Major League Baseball's early days, the players themselves. An economics professor, Ritter invested his downtime from 1962-66 in interviewing elderly men, baseball players all who knew what it was like to face a Walter Johnson fastball, or have Ty Cobb slide into the base they were covering.
"People were more unique then, more unusual, more different from each other," says Davy Jones, who played on the Tigers with Cobb and Crawford. "Now people are all more or less alike, company men, security minded, conformity - that sort of stuff. In everything, not just baseball."
Transcriptions of Ritter's interviews with Jones and 21 other former players, including Crawford and two others then in the Hall of Fame, makes up the whole of "The Glory Of Their Times," published in 1966 and later extended with four more interviews in 1984. Nearly all the interviews offer both testimony and colour for the game as it was then.
Bill Wambsganss tells us about his unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series, and how Ring Lardner once used his last name to rhyme with "clam's chance" and "Ray Chapman's pants". Fred Snodgrass tells us about his famous muffed fly in the 1911 World Series, and how his New York Giants tried to psyche out the Philadelphia Athletics by sitting on the dugout bench, ostentatiously sharpening their spikes.
You hear so much about another famous World Series moment, the Merkle "boner" of 1908, that you feel like you were there on the field, too. There's a Rashomon-like quality to hearing various interviewees give their different takes on such things as the character of John McGraw and whether "Giant Killer" Harry Coveleski was run out of the league when he was caught chewing on bologna. (Snodgrass says so, while Harry's brother Stanley, a major-league pitcher himself, calls it "a lot of bull".
Not all the interviews are riveting. One wishes Ritter could have pushed some of the old players more, like the rumors that swirled around Smoky Joe Wood involving fixes. But allowing the subjects the reins probably drew more colour out of them than a Grand Jury could have. I love how Crawford keeps telling Ritter he hasn't much time to talk, while giving Ritter one of the longest and most entertaining interviews in the book, describing how players would allow themselves to be rubbed down with "Go Fast," a noxious combination of Vaseline and Tabasco sauce that made them sweat like a sauna.
"I hope I haven't said anything I shouldn't," Crawford says at the end. "There are a lot of the old-timers still left,you know, and they're liable to say, 'That fathead, who the hell does he think he is, anyway, popping off like that!'"
If you like baseball even a little, you will enjoy "The Glory Of Their Times" quite a lot.
Rated by buyers -
If you love the game of baseball as it once was and still should be this is a "must read"...some of the players interviewed by Ritter were unknown to me and I was fascinated to learn of their exploits...I ordered an additional three books and sent them to long time fans of the game...If I was a GM yesterday in MLB I would have every member of the team read this book so that they might appreciate the game as it was in its infancy...the modern player (in most cases)doesn't realize how fortunate he is to wear a major league uniform and earn the money yesterday for playing a "game"
Rated by buyers -
This superb oral history of baseball circa 1900-1920's contains many priceless tales. After Ty Cobb died in 1961 author Lawrence Ritter (1922-2004) took his tape recorder and traveled the USA to interview 22 surviving players from that remarkable era. We hear from top stars and established players, including Ed Roush, Sam Crawford, Smokey Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Sam Jones, Bill Wambsganss, etc. Each player reminisces in his own way, recounting games, teammates, owners, managers, crowds, ballparks, etc. Some talk at length while others are briefer, but each is articulate and illuminating. I particularly liked Rube Marquard's memory of visiting the Chicago firehouse where he'd once slept as a transient, Stan Coveleski's view that baseball kept him from the coal mines, and the remembrances of Davy Jones and Jimmy Austin. It was also interesting to see how these players viewed superstars Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth. This book provides readers with a superb sense of baseball before night games, air travel, TV, radio (except after 1922), farm systems, and in some cities, Sunday baseball.
Ritter set a standard with this superb oral history. The players interviewed here have all departed (the last in 1988), but their memories live on in this superb book. Fans might also enjoy BASEBALL WHEN THE GRASS WAS REAL, a similar effort about a later era by Donald Honig.
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