Charles Ebbets

Much has been written about the legendary players and managers of baseball's Deadball Era (1901-1919). Far less attention has been given to the club owners, like Charles Ebbets. In 1898, after a 15 year apprenticeship, he became president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, taking over a chronic second division team in poor financial condition. Over the next 25 years, he organized four pennant-winning clubs and developed one of the most profitable franchises in the game--while building two state-of-the-art ballparks in Brooklyn. Ebbets was also an effective steward of the national pastime, working tirelessly on innovations that would help all teams, not just his own. Despite his success, his personal weaknesses ultimately undermined much of what he had so painstakingly built. This first full length biography provides an in-depth view of his life and career, filling a critical gap in the history of the Deadball Era and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

"By the mid-1950s, New York had been the unrivaled capital of America's national pastime for a century, a place where baseball was followed with a truly fanatical fevor. The city's threee teams--the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers--had over the previous decade rewarded their fans'devotion with stellar performances: From 1947-1957, one or more of these teems had played in the World series every year but one. Yet on opening day 1958, the Giants and Dogers were gone. Their owners, Walter O'Malley and Horance Stoneham, had ripped them away from their longtime home and from the hearts of millions of devoted and passionate fans and taken them to California" -- inside cover.

Everyone wants to be able to perform well at important moments, especially in the world of sports, where both team and individual efforts are necessary for success. A person who does well for the team is praised for his or her contributions. But when the team suffers a loss, especially at a key point in the season, one person is often blamed for it even though the team is just as responsible. This work considers baseball players whose careers have been defined and misrepresented by one moment in which they botched a play, costing their teams an important victory (often a pennant or World Series win), and ever since have taken most of the blame for the team's breakdown. It covers Fred Merkle, whose controversial failure to tag second base after a game-winning single lost the pennant for the Giants in 1908; Fred Snodgrass whose dropped fly ball contributed to the Red Sox's second championship in the 1912 series; Mickey Owen, whose passed ball resulted in the Dodgers losing Game 4 of the 1941 World Series to the Yankees; Ralph Branca, who delivered one of the most talked about home runs in history to Bobby Thomson in the 1951 NLCS; Mike Torrez, whose home run pitch to Bucky Dent was the final, improbable event in the Sox' great collapse of '78; Tom Niedenfuer, whose blown save in the 1985 NLCS cost the Dodgers the pennant; Donnie Moore, the California Angels pitcher remembered for giving up a home run in Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS; Bill Buckner, whose E-3 caused him to be blamed for the Red Sox's World Series loss in 1986; and Mitch Williams, blamed for his three-run home run pitch to Joe Carter in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series that lost the world championship for the Phillies.

Capturing such quintessentially American pastimes as baseball and road trips in one fascinating work, this updated and expanded guide chronicles more than 500 important events in baseball history with detailed descriptions of the event and information on each location. Packed with historical data, trivia, photographs, and baseball lore, entries include the birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and many locations that are no longer standing. From out-of-the-way spots to the most popular stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, no site is too small or insignificant to be included in this comprehensive directory. Entries include the Buckminster Hotel in Boston, where the Black Sox planned their fix of the 1919 World Series; the original little league field and museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the birthplace of Jackie Robinson; the place where Mickey Mantle was discovered by a scout from the New York Yankees; and the site of the original Wrigley Field, erected in Los Angeles in 1925.

Capturing such quintessentially American pastimes as baseball and road trips in one fascinating work, the updated and expanded third edition of Chris Epting’s Roadside Baseball chronicles more than 500 important events in baseball history with detailed descriptions of the event and information on each location. Packed with historical data, trivia, photographs, and baseball lore, entries include the birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and many locations that are no longer standing. From out-of-the-way spots to the most popular stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, no site is too small or insignificant to be included in this comprehensive guide. The third edition of Roadside Baseball includes hundreds of newly discovered landmarks, including the former locations of stadiums that have been torn down since the last edition of the book (Yankee stadium, Shea stadium, Tiger stadium, etc.), information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Marker project which has placed headstones around the country to honor forgotten African-American ballplayers, new exhibits at existing MLB parks, and suggested daytrip itineraries located near your favorite stadiums. Other new entries include the actual diamond used for the classic film, The Sandlot; the exact location where Mickey Mantle’s legendary 565-foot blast landed; the baseball field in Orange County, California where many believe Babe Ruth hit the longest home run of his career against the great Walter Johnson (along with extremely rare photos of Ruth both batting and pitching during that very game); the newly marked location in Kekionga, Indiana where the first major league game was played in 1871; all 29 markers along the new “Hot Springs Baseball Trail” celebrating baseball history in Arkansas; and Heckscher Fields in Central Park, New York, where Larry David’s softball team played in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusisam.” Entries from the previous edition include the Buckminster Hotel in Boston, where the Black Sox planned their fix of the 1919 World Series; the original little league field and museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the birthplace of Jackie Robinson; the place where Mickey Mantle was discovered by a scout from the New York Yankees; and the site of the original Wrigley Field, erected in Los Angeles in 1925. The third edition of Roadside Baseball is the most comprehensive book ever written on the locations of baseball landmarks, and the perfect gift for baseball fans of all ages!

August Garry Herrmann entered the murky waters of 19th century machine politics in Cincinnati, serving as a trusted lieutenant to one of the most powerful political bosses in the country, George B. Cox. Herrmann, a gifted man who introduced modern management principles to municipal government and oversaw the committee that built Cincinnati's modern water works system, eventually did for baseball what he did for his home town, guiding it into a new century. Along with George B. Cox and Cincinnati mayor Julius Fleischmann, Herrmann bought the Cincinnati Reds from John T. Brush in 1902. By 1903 he had chaired the peace conference between the leagues that ushered in the modern game. With the leagues united, Herrmann was selected to head up the National Commission, a three-person ruling body that governed major league baseball in the years before the commissionership.

One of the most influential and controversial team owners in professional sports history, Walter O’Malley (1903–79) is best remembered—and still reviled by many—for moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Yet much of the O’Malley story leading up to the Dodgers’ move is unknown or created from myth, and there is substantially more to the man. When he entered the public eye, the self-constructed family background and early life he presented was gilded. Later his personal story was distorted by some New York sportswriters, who hated him for moving the Dodgers. In Mover and Shaker Andy McCue presents for the first time an objective, complete, and nuanced account of O’Malley’s life. He also departs from the overly sentimentalized accounts of O’Malley as either villain or angel and reveals him first and foremost as a rational, hardheaded businessman, who was a major force in baseball for three decades and whose management and marketing practices radically changed the shape of the game.

Dean A. Sullivan presents a fascinating array of provocative, unexpected, and illuminating materials that reveal the rich history of baseball. The 105 pieces in this work cover such topics as the Merkle Boner, Jim Thorpe, Christy Mathewson, the Black Sox scandal, Lou Gehrig, the death of Ray Chapman, Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, and more from the storied major leagues. Lesser-known treasures celebrate semipro teams, boys' baseball fiction, Japanese baseball, college ball, black baseball, the minor leagues, women's teams, and other facets of the wonderful game of baseball.