Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History

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Review Crazy ’08 is simply a delight, required reading for all fans of baseball in Chicago. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. It's been almost a century since the loopy shenanigans of 1908 that produced what Fortune magazine editor Cait Murphy calls "the year that baseball comes of age," but the resultant drama has hardly faded with time. Although baseball books tend to sag with nostalgia, Murphy's wisecracking yarn digs right into the era's brawling, vivid ugliness with little regard for such niceties, and is all the better for it. Her book is so rife with corruption, greed, stupidity and downright weirdness that it makes today's sport of sanctimony and clean behavior look positively sleepy in comparison. This isn't surprising, given that 1908 was not just the last year that the shockingly victorious Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series, but also the year when a game would be called a tie through sheer Rashomon-like confusion and when a game day riot would take the lives of two people. The titanic matches between the rival Cubs and New York Giants are thrilling enough, but what really makes Murphy's book an addictive pleasure is the joy the author takes in the colorful asides where she fills in the chaotic blanks of an America discovering not just the joy of its national pastime but its very character. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. About the Author Cait Murphy is an assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine in New York. She previously worked at The Economist in London and the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong. A former Little League infielder, Murphy played softball at Amherst College, where she received her degree in American Studies. She does not throw like a girl. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Booklist *Starred Review* Fans knew they were seeing the end of a marvelous season when they watched the Cubs claim the National League pennant by defeating the New York Giants on October 8, 1908. But with the advantage of historical perspective, Murphy recognizes that the '08 fans actually witnessed baseball's decisive turn toward modernity. In a tale peopled with colorful characters--including the regal Christy Mathewson and the boozy Hal Chase--Murphy unfolds the formative events of this frenetic year. Readers will relish the infamous "Merkle game"--a game apparently won by the Giants, but later declared a tie because of a base-running blunder. Almost as riveting is the season-ending replay of the controversial tie, a replay that so aroused fans that some snuck into the game through the sewers, and many stayed to assault the victorious visitors. A writer of exceptional verve when recounting the heroics of the diamond, Murphy evinces a shrewd intelligence when scanning the cultural forces remaking the world beyond the ballpark. She unravels the malign dynamics behind Ty Cobb's violence against blacks, and she limns the parallels between early-twentieth-century anxieties about immigrant anarchists and twenty-first-century fears of foreign terrorists. A book that will long claim the attention of serious sports enthusiasts. Bryce Christensen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more