From the perspective of 2007, the unintentional irony of Chance's boast is manifest these days, the question is when will the Cubs ever win a game they have to have. In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team the first dynasty of the 20th century. Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and the egregiously crooked Hal Chase ensured that the junior circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's and the Cubs' year. Crazy '08, however, is not just the exciting story of a great season. It is also about the forces that created modern baseball, and the America that produced it. In 1908, crooked pols run Chicago's First Ward, and gambling magnates control the Yankees. Fans regularly invade the field to do handstands or argue with the umps; others shoot guns from rickety grandstands prone to burning. There are anarchists on the loose and racial killings in the town that made Lincoln. On the flimsiest of pretexts, General Abner Doubleday becomes a symbol of Americanism, and baseball's own anthem, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, is a hit. Picaresque and dramatic, 1908 is a season in which so many weird and wonderful things happen that it is somehow unsurprising that a hairpiece, a swarm of gnats, a sudden bout of lumbago, and a disasterdown in the mines all play a role in its outcome. And sometimes the events are not so wonderful at all. There are several deaths by baseball, and the shadow of corruption creeps closer to the heart of baseball the honesty of the game itself. Simply put, 1908 is the year that baseb
^Cait N. MurphyCrazy '08 : How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait N. Murphy (2007, Hardcover)ISBN 9780060889371 (revised Jun 2015)
Cait Murphy observes that 1908 is an important season in the history of baseball in America. She closes the book with the statement (page 288): "In the sweep of baseball's history, 1908 is not the end of an era, nor the beginning of one. It is, however, the end of the beginning." She starts the work by answering why she explores 1908 (page xiii): "The best season in baseball history id 1908. Besides two agonizing pennant races, it features history's finest pitching duel, hurled in the white heat of an O..
Baseball fans who are also fans of baseball history are always on the lookout for books that flesh out familiar stories from the game's past. There are a plethora of baseball non fiction books that merely put a spit shine on eras, teams and players of bygone days, adding nothing to our understanding or appreciation. Then along comes a book like "Crazy '08" by Cait Murphy a work that not only adds new dimensions to the wild and whacky story of the 1908 NL pennant race but sheds a bright shining light on a ..
Cait Murphy has composed a splendidly written chronicle of a year in the life of baseball. "Crazy `08" builds fast with a sweeping history of the years preceding '08. It then ties together story after fascinating story, breathing life into the dead ball era. This is not simply a baseball book, it is a book about life, competition, egos, culture, and a nation. The portraits are not always pretty, because baseball (and life) are not always attractive. However Murphy's paintings of these pictures are striking ..
