Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Wildest Times in Baseball History

by Mark S. Halfon

2014 SLA Baseball Caucus Readers’ Choice Award winner from the Special Libraries Association

The Deadball Era (1901–1920) is a baseball fan’s 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 “rowdyism.”  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 “benefit contests” to aid fellow big leaguers and the country in times of need. “Joke games” 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.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, History, Nonfiction, Audiobook

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Joe Santoro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read more than the average fan about the deadball era, but I was hoping a general book like this might have some tidbits I didn't already know.

The author does a really good job in his overviews (especially about the evolution of the spitball and emeryball), but alot less good on his bios (He left all the good stuff out of Mathewson's and Johnson's was just a list of game scores).

He also had an interesting take on the Black Sox scandal... that it actually helped baseball, since it cleaned up the sport at a time when it could most withstand a scandal. I kinda like it.

The beginning and the end of the book is definitely worth reading.. .skip the bios... you get better ones elsewhere.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent quick read about one of the most interesting eras in baseball. I've read other books about this period that were better written and provided a better profile of some of the main characters (John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, etc.), but this book makes two important (and related) points that most others don't: 1. Cheating was rampant in baseball during this period and wasn't viewed the way it is today, and 2. For this reason, the commonly repeated refrain that the 1919 Black Sox scandal almost killed baseball is greatly exaggerated. It was a big deal, to be sure, but as the author amply demonstrates, it was never a real threat to the popularity of the sport.

[Frodo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got an education about an era I have long heard about but little understood. The names of Cobb, Wagner, Baker and Shoeless Joe took on new meaning after reading Halfon's delightful book. The Deadball Era was anything but dead considering the cheating, violence and gambling mixed in with the small ball approach to scoring. Thoroughly enjoyed.

[Chris Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tidy summary of some of the better known players, games and rule changes from the Deadball Era. If, like me, you have read dozens of books about this period in baseball history, you may find this book a let down, because there's nothing in here that you haven't read before. (For me, it felt a bit like reading a Wikipedia entry that I could've probably penned myself.) But I will give it a positive rating for those who are coming at the first two decades of 20th century baseball unaware of anything as of yet. And who knows? It may inspire you to dive deeper into an era of baseball which never fails to interest me.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Carlin once mocked baseball in one of his sketches, comparing its urbaneness with the ‘technological struggle’ of football. He couldn’t make such a sketch a hundred years before, because baseball as we know it was very different — technically professional, in that players were receiving pay and signed to contracts and the like, but far more combative, with players and fans accosting one another and often the umpire, leading to serious injuries and at least one death. Violence was more accepted as part of play, with spiked cleats giving basemen a reason to dread runners sliding at them. It wasn’t quite as bad as the old practice of tagging runners out by hitting them with a thrown baseball, but player-on-player injuries were not uncommon. A lot of rules moderating the sport did not yet exist, so fielders had considerable license to modify balls to make them unpredictable and even difficult to see — and the same ball might be used for the duration of the game, being replaced only if it was knocked out of the park. Already soft to begin with, when a misshapen ball soaked in tobacco spit and covered in dirt careened toward the plate, it had a better chance of becoming a ‘beanball’ and smacking the batter than it did making it into the outfield. The difficult nature of these balls meant that players played ‘inside’ baseball, working the infield and batting not for power but for strategy — the object was to make contact and get men on base, not to swing for the fences, so there was more bunting than we see today. Frankly, this kind of game sounds more interesting, but the grand slams that followed in the wake of Ruth and rules that reduced the amount of ball-tampering and irregular pitching proved to be popular with spectators. Violence and drunkenness were common, but so was gambling — and the cheating that followed in its wake, as pro ball players who felt shortchanged by their owners (and whose attempts at striking were always undermined) were susceptible to playing a weaker game in return for a few thousand under the table. There are a lot of big personalities here, including Ty Cobb — who Halfon is kinder to than others, detailing how the southerner was endlessly hazed by his Yankee teammates, so much to the point that he started carrying a handgun for protection. The book ends with an appraisal of the Black Sox scandal, which Halfon argues was not at all unusual for its time, and the fact that it became such a public outrage was more helpful to baseball than not, leading to increased scrutiny and better oversight to sharply reduced corruption from gambling. At any rate, following the passage of Prohibition, the gangsters bankrolling such corruption would soon have other mischief to keep them busy. If you’re a fan of baseball, this was tremendously entertaining, with a lot of strong characters at play and insight into an era where the game was very different.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, you have to like baseball. Clear that hurdle, though, and Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Home Run Baker, and the Wildest Times in Baseball History is a pleasure. Written by Mark Halfon, a Philosophy professor at Nassau Community College whose previous baseball book posed the conundrum, Can a Dead Man Strike Out, this one takes the reader back to the days of Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Joe McCarthy, et. al. Lest you think, as I did, that perhaps the old baseball days were better, cleaner--except for the 1919 Black Sox and Ty Cobb's sharpened spikes--less tainted by commercialization and steroids, read and be disabused. They cheated like crazy, those old guys, or maybe, they cheated like Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire. They doctored their pitches, they gave away games to the other teams in cozy little pennant-race deals, and they, and their fans, resorted to violence on a regular basis. Yes, even Mathewson, the pride of Bucknell, a wholesome college man, once punched out a lemonade kid. In the days when sellout crowds might be just roped off in foul territory with easy access to the field of play, "kill the umpire" was not just an idle threat. Halfon's analysis recontextualizes the 1919 World Series and the White Sox players involved, providing a fresh angle. As a reader, I was mostly with those old-time players, underpaid, scrambling for any edge, playing a whole game with a single baseball, turning black and hard to see, using the "scientific" approach to scratch runs, pitching inning after inning with nary a middle-inning reliever in sight. Chatty, lively, well worth the read, and then,a trip to Cooperstown.

[Daniel Golden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall it was a good book. I enjoyed the the stories of certain games or pennant races because he really went into detail on those. But with the biographies of certain players, details were sorely lacking. I didn’t learn anything about these players that I already didn’t know. And it was disappointing that there was no biography for Home Run Baker included even though he was specifically mentioned in the title. Furthermore, the author got a couple of facts wrong in the Postscript section, such as listing HOF Ed Walsh as a pitcher with the Chicago Cubs c. 1906-1908 But Walsh pitched for the Chicago White Sox at that time and never spent any part of his career with the Cubs. Another error that stood out to me was about the 1915 Federal League pennant chase, where the author listed the teams’ winning percentages incorrectly. As a baseball historian, perhaps I’m the only one that notices small errors like this. But the fact that both of those errors occurred in the book’s final pages left a bad taste in my mouth and bothered me enough to lower my rating from 4-stars to 3-stars.

[Kyle Garner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A joy to read.

[Roger Piasecki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the stories of this era of baseball .

[Eugene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointed. A very dry read that felt like it was all over the place.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this deep dive into the world of early baseball where rules were harder to enforce and personalities were more forceful and transformative.

[Drew Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inside ball lives on

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy this era of baseball, but wasn't able to get into the book.

How did this book find me? It was on Audible+ until October 21.

[Jesse Jester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice easy read with lots of great stories and, of course, amazing nicknames. I've always been extremely fascinated by statistics and the Deadball Era provides incredibly stark contrasts to the baseball I grew up with in the 90s and the baseball of now.

I'm also a realist and know that most of the stories from that era are exaggerated or sensationalized to an extent, even if the writers themselves were credible and honest people. It's just what it was back then.

Still, this was a great collection of short stories and fun baseball sayings and anecdotes. Top notch.

Good reading to you

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book if you haven't read a "deadball era" book, but, if you have, you probably won't find anything new. I know I didn't.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a good read from the early days of baseball. When tough as leather ballplayers duked it out on and off the field.