This rollicking novel of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal is a sort of hybrid
of Ragtime, Eight Men Out &
You
Know Me, Al. Luther Pond, a sportswriter for William Randolph
Hearst's New York Morning Journal, shares the narration with "Buck" Weaver.
Between them they weave a tale that intersperses portraits of John L. Sullivan,
Ty Cobb, Hearst, George M. Cohan, etc. (here's a description of Cobb: "watching
him play, it was possible to speculate, in defiance of logic, that winning
was not his only concern; that Ty Cobb was consumed by another, more primitive
objective: to annihilate the egos of other men" ) with the story of how
eight players on the best team in baseball came to participate in a scheme
to lose a World Series.
For anyone who knows the story of the Black Sox, much of the book will
be familiar, but there are some nice set pieces--especially the Jeffries/Johnson
fight--& the world of newspapering & Yellow Journalism is as much
a focus of the story as baseball.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (B+)
Websites:
See also:
Harry Stein (
2 books reviewed)
Sports (Baseball)
Book-related and General Links:
-The
Black Sox Scandal
-Shoeless
Joe Jackson Virtual Hall of Fame
-ESSAY:
The Smaller the Ball, the Better the Book: A Game Theory of Literature
(George Plimpton, NY Times Book Review)
If you liked Hoopla, try:
Alexander, Charles
-John
McGraw
-Rogers
Hornsby : A Biography
Asinof, Eliot
-Eight
Men Out : The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
Creamer, Robert
-Stengel
:
His Life and Times
-Babe
: The Legend Comes to Life
Doctorow, E.L.
-Ragtime
Greenberg, Eric Rolfe
-The
Celebrant
Honig, Donald
-Baseball
When the Grass Was Real : Baseball from the Twenties to the Forties
Told by the Men Who Played It
Kinsella, W.P.
-Shoeless
Joe
Lardner, Ring
-You
Know Me, Al: A Busher's Letters
Lieb, Fred
-Baseball
As I Have Known It
Matthewson, Christy
-Pitching
in a Pinch or Baseball from the Inside
Ritter, Lawrence S.
-The
Glory of Their Times : The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It
Comments:
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