Ed Mckean

The exemplar of the major league slugging shortstop before either Honus Wagner or Lou Boudreau, Ed McKean spent a dozen seasons as a high-profile contributor to the Cleveland Spiders, leading his team to three playoff berths and the 1895 Temple Cup championship. He played in no fewer than four of the Society for American Baseball Research's "100 greatest games of the 19th century." This first McKean biography returns the charismatic Irishman to the spotlight, recounting his efforts to reimagine himself as one of Cleveland's original sports heroes, his struggle to win a significant place in fin de siecle America, and his leading role in the Emerald Age of baseball. Appendices provide his major league career batting record, his year-by-year offensive rankings, and even lines from a poem attributed to him.

Cleveland and the surrounding area was home to one of the earliest and most active baseball scenes outside of the eastern seaboard. This extraordinarily detailed history combines author commentary with first-hand accounts to document baseball's rapid development and popularization in the region during the decades following the Civil War. Ordered chronologically and then geographically by town, chapters follow the game's rise from the earliest reports on ball in 1841, to the era of loosely organized, town-to-town rivalries and semipro clubs, and finally through the early era of the professional, and eventually major league, sport.

Baseball player and manager Hugh Ambrose Jennings was the kind of colorful personality who inspired nicknames. Sportswriters called him "Ee-yah" for his famous coaching box cry and "Hustling Hughey" for his style of play. But to the nearly 100 other men from northeast Pennsylvania who followed Jennings from the coal mines to the major leagues, he was known as "Big Daddy," not for his physical stature but for his iconic status to men desperate to escape the mines. The son of an immigrant coal miner from Pittston, Pennsylvania, Jennings himself became a miner at the ripe old age of 11 or 12. He eventually became a mule driver, earning $1.10 per day and dreaming of getting $5 per day for playing baseball on Saturday afternoons. From the rough-and-tumble world of semi-pro baseball to the major leagues, Jennings was driven to succeed and fearless in his pursuit of his dream. He joined the Baltimore Orioles in 1894 and went on to become manager of the Detroit Tigers during Ty Cobb's heyday. Jennings' story is emblematic of how the national pastime and the American dream came together for a generation of ballplayers in the early 20th century.

In an era of rowdy teams, the Cleveland Spiders (1887-1899) were baseball's rowdiest. Managed by Oliver "Patsy" Tebeau, a quick-tempered infielder, the Spiders seemed to heap abuse of one kind or another on everyone--umpires, opposing teams, even the fans. Their aggression never brought home the pennant, but Cleveland's battles with the league's top clubs, including an 1895 Temple Cup victory over the Baltimore Orioles, are now legendary. Yet the story of the Spiders amounts to more than a 12 year free-for-all. There were top-flight players like Ed McKean, George Davis, Jesse Burkett, and Cy Young. There was the racially progressive signing of Holy Cross star Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian in the major leagues. And then there was the team's final season, 1899, when a club ravaged by syndicalism set the standard for baseball futility.

During the 19th century, baseball was a game with few rules, many rowdy players and just one umpire. Dirty tricks were simply part of a winning strategy--spiking, body-blocking, cutting bases short or hiding an extra ball to be used when needed were all OK. Deliberately failing to catch a fly in order to have the game called due to darkness was also acceptable. And drinking before a game was perhaps expected. Providing brief bios of dozens of players, managers, umpires and owners, this book chronicles some of the flamboyant, unruly and occasionally criminal behavior of baseball's early years.

Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of America's military power abroad.

An irony of enshrinement at the baseball Hall of Fame is that it's no guarantee of lasting name recognition. The sport's history stretches too far back, as today fans scratch their heads about athletes and owners who were among the most celebrated public figures of their time. Who was more renowned than George Wright, baseball's greatest star during the transition from amateur to professional play? Who was more feared than Big Dan Brouthers? Maybe it was Amos Rusie, who threw so hard that some say the rules makers increased the pitching distance just to make things fair. Of the 256 players, managers and executives in the Hall of Fame, the names that are known well--Ty Cobb, Connie Mack, Willie Mays--account for a small minority. This book contains biographical and statistical information on 16 previously overlooked Hall of Famers, including Morgan G. Bulkeley, Candy Cummings, Roger Bresnahan, Jack Chesbro, Jesse Burkett, Kid Nichols, Bobby Wallace, John Clarkson, Elmer Flick, Eppa Rixey, Jake Beckley, Roger Connor, Vic Willis, Willie Wells, Frank Selee, and Bid McPhee. These men, selections of the oft-criticized Veterans Committee, all enjoyed remarkable careers--and were themselves remarkable stories, as the author discovered.