Baseball's Offensive Greats of the Deadball Era PDF Download

Author: Robert E. Kelly
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786453583
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, and Honus Wagner were among the greatest hitters who ever played major league baseball, but how do they stack up against players of other eras and each other? This book employs a statistical analysis of "production per at-bat" to compare 120 top batters by position over a 19-year period when contact, speed and hit-and-run strategy were more valuable than power and home runs. Included are an analysis of each player's strengths and weaknesses, rankings of the most talented and the most valuable producers, and the selection of an All-Star team for the era.

Author: Don Lankiewicz
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781466409705
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Honus Wagner, the star player for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the Deadball Era, said hitting a baseball in those days was like hitting “a chunk of mud.” The game back then was played a different way than it is today. Bunts were more common than home runs, and pitching dominated hitting. It was the age of the legal spitball, shine ball, emery ball, and grease ball. It was also a time of change, when much of what we see as the modern game came to be. Many of the practices and traditions we see in the game today--from team nicknames on uniforms to the seventh-inning stretch--have their origin in the Deadball Era.

Author: Fred W. Veil
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1604948280
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Bucky Veil was a professional baseballer who played the game in the early years of the twentieth century, a time when baseball was beginning to evolve into America's national pastime. As a twenty-two-year-old rookie with the 1903 Pittsburg Pirates, he pitched in the first World Series of modern major league baseball, thus witnessing firsthand an important milestone in the history of the sport. No less an authority than Hall of Famer Honus Wagner predicted that Bucky would be "a great star." Bucky is a story of baseball in the Deadball Era, told from the perspective of the author's grandfather, Fred "Bucky" Veil, and other professionals who played a game that was very different from that of the modern era. It was a game that emphasized strategy over power-Babe Ruth and the long ball were a decade or more in the future-and relied upon speed; smart, aggressive base-running; good bunting techniques; and timely hitting, all designed to advance runners into positions from which they could score. Baseball in the Deadball Era was played with a passion that is largely absent in the modern game. Bucky was blessed to have had the opportunity to play professional baseball in an era when it truly was a game. Fred W. Veil currently lives in Prescott, Arizona. A native Pennsylvanian and a Marine Corps veteran, he is a graduate of Washington & Jefferson College and the Duquesne University School of Law. Previously published works include articles in the Duquesne Law Review and the Journal of Arizona History. He and his wife, Sally, have two adult children and one grandchild.

Author: Mark S. Halfon
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612346499
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The Deadball Era (1901û1920) is a baseball fanÆs dream. Hope and despair, innocence and cynicism, and levity and hostility blended then to create an air of excitement, anticipation, and concern for all who entered the confines of a major league ballpark. Cheating for the sake of victory earned respect, corrupt ballplayers fixed games with impunity, and violence plagued the sport. Spectators stormed the field to attack players and umpires, ballplayers charged the stands to pummel hecklers, and physical battles between opposing clubs occurred regularly in a phenomenon known as ôrowdyism.ö At the same time, endearing practices infused baseball with lightheartedness, kindness, and laughter. Fans ran onto the field with baskets of flowers, loving cups, diamond jewelry, gold watches, and cash for their favorite players in the middle of games. Ballplayers volunteered for ôbenefit contestsö to aid fellow big leaguers and the country in times of need. ôJoke gamesö reduced sport to pure theater as outfielders intentionally dropped fly balls, infielders happily booted easy grounders, hurlers tossed soft pitches over the middle of the plate, and umpires ignored the rules. Winning meant nothing, amusement meant everything, and league officials looked the other way. Mark Halfon looks at life in the major leagues in the early 1900s, the careers of John McGraw, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson, and the events that brought about the end of the Deadball Era. He highlights the strategies, underhanded tactics, and bitter battles that defined this storied time in baseball history, while providing detailed insights into the players and teams involved in bringing to a conclusion this remarkable period in baseball history.

Author: Charles Leerhsen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451645767
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Details the life of the legendary, record-holding baseball player, who retired in 1928 and became the first inductee into the Hall of Fame, but who has also been categorized as a belligerent, aggressive player and a racist who hated women and children.

Author: Pete Cava
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476622701
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Indiana boasts a rich baseball tradition, with 10 native sons enshrined in Cooperstown. This biographical dictionary provides a close look at the lives of all 364 Hoosier big leaguers, who include New York City’s first baseball superstar; the first rookie pitcher to win three games in a World Series; the man who caught most of Cy Young’s record 511 career wins; one of the game’s first star relievers; the player who held the record for consecutive games played before Lou Gehrig; an obscure infielder mentioned in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip; baseball’s only one-legged pitcher; Indiana’s first Mr. Basketball, who became one of baseball’s greatest pinch-hitters; the first African American to play for the Cincinnati Reds; the only pitcher to throw a perfect game in the World Series; the skipper of the 1969 “Miracle Mets”; the pitcher for whom a ground-breaking surgical procedure is named; and the only two men to have played in both the World Series and the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Author: Robert E. Kelly
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786462132
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Close presidential elections in the United States are measured, evaluated and remembered primarily by simple statistics. One can easily find out, for example, how many states in the electoral college were won by each presidential candidate, and by how much. But to stop there is to miss the most dramatic parts of the political contests. Why were the votes so close? What issues split the electorate? Was it the behavior or the reputation of the candidates? This book answers these questions and more, identifying and examining 12 of the closest elections, from the 1796 battle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Author: Bill Jenkinson
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In an unprecedented look at Babe Ruth's amazing batting power, sure to inspire debate among baseball fans of every stripe, one of the country's most respected and trusted baseball historians reveals the amazing conclusions of more than twenty years of research. Jenkinson takes readers through Ruth's 1921 season, in which his pattern of battled balls would have accounted for more than 100 home runs in today's ballparks and under today's rules. Yet, 1921 is just tip of the iceberg, for Jenkinson's research reveals that during an era of mammoth field dimensions Ruth hit more 450-plus-feet shots than anybody in history, and the conclusions one can draw are mind boggling.

Author: Craig Messmer
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071595716
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Get ready for the mother of all numbers. If you had to give just one number to determine a baseball player's success, which would you pick? Batting average, RBI, OPS, home-run percentage? It's impossible to choose. Now you don't have to. For the first time ever, there's a formula that incorporates every aspect of a player's offensive game into one stat that gets straight to the core of performance. The Offensive Production and Efficiency Average, or P/E Average for short, gives you a comprehensive measure of everyone who has ever played the game. Stat One walks you through the calculations and then takes you around the field to analyze, rate, and rank the greatest players in baseball history at every position. You'll find surprising answers to the questions that really matter: Who's better on first, Foxx or Gehrig? Is Jim Rice a Hall of Famer? Would Derek Jeter come up short next to old Honus Wagner? How does Mantle compare with Mays? And much more--plus the 100 greatest players of all time

Author: Christy Mathewson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In one of baseball?s earliest and greatest memoirs, Christy Mathewson takes readers back in time to the "dead ball" era of baseball before the days of power hitting sluggers like Babe Ruth. This period was characterized by low scoring games and teams relying on infield play and stolen bases to score their points. Of the dead ball pitchers, there was no one better than Christy "Big Six" Mathewson who played nearly his entire career with the New York Giants. He remains one of the most winning pitchers in baseball history and his play in the 1905 World Series is often considered to be the greatest pitching performance of all time. In "Pitching in a Pinch," Mathewson provides valuable and intriguing insight into a classic era in baseball history. At the same time, his experience, wisdom and journey into the mind of a player remains relevant today. As a classic, entertaining and unforgettable work of baseball history, "Pitching in a Pinch" ranks among the best.