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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | 796.357 WEI | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | 796.357 WEI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The untold story of Babe Ruth's Yankees, John McGraw's Giants, and the extraordinary baseball season of 1923.
Before the 27 World Series titles -- before Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Derek Jeter -- the Yankees were New York's shadow franchise. They hadn't won a championship, and they didn't even have their own field, renting the Polo Grounds from their cross-town rivals the New York Giants. In 1921 and 1922, they lost to the Giants when it mattered most: in October.
But in 1923, the Yankees played their first season on their own field, the newly-built, state of the art baseball palace in the Bronx called "the Yankee Stadium." The stadium was a gamble, erected in relative outerborough obscurity, and Babe Ruth was coming off the most disappointing season of his career, a season that saw his struggles on and off the field threaten his standing as a bona fide superstar.
It only took Ruth two at-bats to signal a new era. He stepped up to the plate in the 1923 season opener and cracked a home run to deep right field, the first homer in his park, and a sign of what lay ahead. It was the initial blow in a season that saw the new stadium christened "The House That Ruth Built," signaled the triumph of the power game, and established the Yankees as New York's -- and the sport's -- team to beat.
From that first home run of 1923 to the storybook World Series matchup that pitted the Yankees against their nemesis from across the Harlem River -- one so acrimonious that John McGraw forced his Giants to get to the Bronx in uniform rather than suit up at the Stadium -- Robert Weintraub vividly illuminates the singular year that built a classic stadium, catalyzed a franchise, cemented Ruth's legend, and forever changed the sport of baseball.
Author Notes
Robert Weintraub is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Slate and the author of the acclaimed books The House That Ruth Built , The Victory Season , and No Better Friend .
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his first book, Slate sports columnist Weintraub examines the 1923 New York Yankees, the team that opened Yankee Stadium and won the first of the Bronx Bombers' record 27 World Series titles. The center of this work is the clash between the Yankees' star, Babe Ruth, with his new "bashing" style of playing the game, and the classic "scientific baseball" epitomized by manager John McGraw and his New York Giants. While the Giants got the best of the Yanks in the '22 fall classic, Ruth and the Yankees' 1923 World Series victory over their crosstown rivals would change the face of baseball and New York City forever. Weintraub nicely infuses modern references like "imagine Ruth as Rocky Balboa preparing to wreak vengeance on Ivan Drago" into his 1920s descriptions. The book is comprehensive, and Weintraub details everything from the construction of the stadium and the careers of Ruth and McGraw to a detailed season overview and deconstruction of the 1923 World Series. The stories about Ruth and McGraw hold the narrative together, but it is the asides of forgotten personalities like Mose "The Rabbi of Swat" Solomon, Russ "Pep" Youngs, and Yankees co-owner Cap Huston that create a much-needed undercurrent of character and humor. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The whole baseball year of 1923 is the frame for Weintraub's elegantly constructed narrative: the year the Yankees moved into their own stadium in the Bronx and won their first World Series. He does this month by month, winding back to cover the outsized personalities whofilled the front and back offices and the fields, and forward to cover the box scores and idiosyncrasies of every major game that year. Heywood Broun, Damon Runyon, and Fred Lieb (who coined the phrase of the title) covered the Yankees then, and their rich and evocative styles with their fulsome rhythms echo in Weintraub's prose. The story is familiar and yet not. Who knew that Hendrik Van Loon, author of the first Newbery winner, The Story of Mankind, (1922) gave Babe Ruth a lucky silver dollar just before the stadium opened? Or that the boy Harpo Marx used to steal fruit from the orchards behind Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert's mansion on Fifth Avenue and 93rd Street? Even more enlightening is how different the game was then. John McGraw, who expected his Giants to beat the Yankees in the World Series in 1923 as they had in 1922, did not choose his starting pitcher for the first World Series game until just hours before the first pitch. There is no nickname ever used for a player that Weintraub overlooks nor any colorful phrase now common in baseball that he doesn't cite. Exhaustive, occasionally exhausting, but a treasure for the fan who cannot get enough.--DeCandido, GraceAnne A. Copyright 2010 Booklist
