Synopses & Reviews
In
The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford, NPR sports commentator and
Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson was one of baseball's first superstars. Over six feet tall, clean cut, and college educated, he didn't pitch on the Sabbath and rarely spoke an ill word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York Giants manager John McGraw, by contrast, was ferocious. The pugnacious tough guy was already a star infielder who, with the Baltimore Orioles, helped develop a new, scrappy style of baseball, with plays like the hit-and-run, the Baltimore chop, and the squeeze play. When McGraw joined the Giants in 1902, the Giants were coming off their worst season ever. Yet within three years, Mathewson clinched New York City's first World Series for McGraw's team by throwing three straight shutouts in only six days, an incredible feat that is invariably called the greatest World Series performance ever. Because of their wonderful odd-couple association, baseball had its first superstar, the Giants ascended into legend, and baseball as a national pastime bloomed.
Review
"Deford effectively weaves the threads of these two touchstone lives into the broader tapestry of an ascendant sport and a rapidly modernizing America. A fine baseball book but just as fine a study of American popular culture." Wes Lukowsky, Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Deford is in command of this story, as much a piece of social as of sporting history.... Its Defords reach of baseball knowledge... that sets this one apart." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
"Deford tips a journalist's fedora, rather than a child's cap, to one of the most remarkable pairings in sports history." Alan Schwartz, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Deford's dual biography is more than simply sketches of two starkly different personalities. It re-creates the early twentieth-century period, explaining the mood of the country and the nascent stages of a game in flux." David Plaut, USA Today Sports Weekly
Review
"A breezily incisive look at the sport when it truly was America's pastime... The surprising similarities between today and yesteryear pulse through Game's narrative." Michael Roberts, Westword
Review
"Vintage Deford, lively and learned and fun... He is especially deft at depicting forgotten athletes and their stories. It is a pleasure to get to read him again on such a subject." John Eisenberg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Review
"Thank heaven for Frank Deford.... Written with the deft touch and the huge vocabulary of a great author, The Old Ball Game is worth reading twice, just to pick up all the details." David King, San Antonio Express-News
Review
"Frank Deford writes the kind of sentences that you find yourself rereading for the sheer pleasure of it. The Old Ball Game was never more fun, or more real, than it is in the pages of his marvelous book." Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four