TBBBC Book 3 review

Here comes your long-awaited TBBBC Book 3 review. In June, I read Crazy '08 -- How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy. I don't know too much about Murphy -- her bio in the book indicates that she's a big baseball fan, a trait passed down by her father, and she's an editor at a financial magazine. She's also obviously a history buff and she's created one of the finest odes to baseball that I've ever read.


Those rare baseball fans who are aware of the 1908 season most likely know of it because of the famed "Bonehead Merkle game," in which the New York Giants were denied a crucial late-season victory over the Chicago Cubs when rookie Fred Merkle failed to touch second base after what appeared to be a game-winning hit.

But as Murphy points out, 1908 was about so, so much more than that one game. As the subtitle indicates, she introduces us to quite the cast of characters along the way, and in doing so she brings to life old ballplayers who were to me little more than a list of names in the record book. Among the central figures of the 1908 season were John McGraw, Christy Matthewson, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, Frank Chance, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Addie Joss, Napoleon Lajoie, and even Cy Young himself.

The best part of this book was how she illustrated the story of the season with the backstories of these players' lives, their significance not only to 1908 but their entire careers. I also loved how she examined how baseball fit into the fabric of society at the time, why it captured the imagination of the post-industrial revolution country that was still coming to grips with the emergence of city life as the norm.

Murphy spins yarns about baseball, of course, but she also manages to educate the reader about the nascent labor movement, corrupt Chicago politics, race relations, anarchists, and why it's ludicrous to believe that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. And though she writes from the position of the studious academic -- the book includes a 21-page bibliography and 38 pages of citations and endnotes -- Murphy's voice is clear, lively and anything but stuffy. Anybody who wonders how baseball became the game we're watching in 2009 should give Crazy '08 a read.

TBBBC rating: 5 fungoes (out of 5)

Now batting: The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski

On deck: The Dixie Association (Voice of the South) by David Hays

See also:

• TBBBC Book 2 review, The Entitled
• TBBBC Book 1 review, The Last Real Season