Crazy '08 - Cait Murphy

Why my dad felt I’d want to read a book about the last season where the Cubs won the World Series is beyond me, but here we are. Murphy’s argument is that, taking everything together, 1908 is the greatest season in baseball history. This is factoring in not only the tense pennant races – both leagues had 3-team races where who was in first changed daily right until the end – but also the historically significant players and moments involved. The famous Tinker-Evers/Chance double play combo; John McGraw, who managed the New York Giants for about 3 decades; Christ Matthewson, having the best year of his career, only to frequently find himself bested by Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. Cy Young having his last great season, Walter Johnson having his first great season, noted racist scumbag Ty Cobb helping lead Detroit to a World Series in front of largely indifferent crowds, while Honus Wagner tried to do the same in Pittsburgh for equally commitment-shy fans. On and on.

I don’t know that I buy the argument, especially when Murphy admits the Giants lost the pennant to Chicago because of a game that was declared a tie and then replayed due to a technicality. That being the “Merkle’s Boner” game, where the Giants drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 9^th, but Merkle, who was the runner on first, never bothered to touch second before running to the clubhouse. So he was out on a force out, but with the crowd all over the field, there was no hope of getting the game going again before dark, thus a tie, and the game being replayed, and the Giants lost. That just seems like kind of a stupid thing for THE GREATEST SEASON EVER to hinge on. I guess that was one of the charms of old-timey baseball, like only having two (or one ump) so it was easier for players to pull a fast one, or fans sitting in the outfield if there weren’t any more seats in the bleachers.

That said, it is an entertaining book, though Murphy has several chapters with additional sections where she discusses some concurrent story of wider range, then ties it back to baseball. Usually this takes the form of pointing out baseball’s tendency to make claims about the game, without investigating whether they’re true, or pointedly ignoring the truth when they aren’t. So talk about vice and political cronyism in Chicago, tie it to not only some of the questionable deals team owners made, but to baseball’s contention it is a completely honest, with no possibility of games being fixed. The game is honest because they say it is. Or a discussion of baseball’s “universal” appeal and acceptance with regards to segregation gets tied into a look at how things in the early 20^th Century were getting steadily worse for African-Americans.

Some of the digressions make sense, some don’t. You could safely skip them if you just want to read the baseball parts. Murphy seems to be enjoying herself. Her tone shifts between amused and exasperated by the players’ and managers’ chicanery and complaining, and you can practically hear her roll her eyes at some of the protestations of innocence.

‘Baseball is a sport whose moral boundaries are, to put it diplomatically, ill defined. Bases are stolen. Pitchers deceive. Fielders fake out runners. Runners mislead fielders. And that’s all good, clean fun – part of what makes the sport a chess match played on an emerald diamond. More than that, though, the game has a rich history of trickery and outright cheating. Baseball, noted one early twentieth-century sportswriter, I not a polite game – which may, he added, explain why it became the national pastime.’