Book Review: 'Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History'

Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History

By Cait Murphy

Funny story about this book: From the first day I saw it at a local bookseller, I wanted it. It was about baseball, it looked extremely interesting and it featured a period of baseball (pre-1920 baseball) that I know little about it.

But, hell, why pay $20-odd for a book?

So it comes out in paperback. Cheaper, but it's still crazy to pay $15 for a new book.

Sure enough, my instincts paid off. Three weeks ago I roll into my neighborhood Barnes & Noble and was purusing the discount table when I saw it:

$5.98.

Cash on the barrellhead, ready to roll.

This is a really fine book. Before, names like Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, Johnny Evers and John McGraw were just that. Names.

Honus Wagner was a famous baseball card. That's it. Now I know.

I also know that although a lot has changed in terms of the quality of the game, equipment, marketing, fields, fans, media and whatnot, but there are still a variety of common themes from then 'til now.

In 1908, the country was coming back from a deep economic abyss. They were dealing with a factor that was compromising the integrity of the game (then gambling, now steroids). They had cantakerous, ego-driven superstar personalities. Barry Bonds may be a prick, but Ty Cobb was the biggest dick of them all. McGraw may not have been far behind.

You had the superstar like Honus Wagner. It was before the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees even really existed more or less were good. There was no baseball past the Mississippi River and Chicago and New York still ruled. Owners were tempestuous and looked to make a buck. Fans of bad teams didn't show up. Teams not making money were moved.

Sound familiar?

There are probably 100 different anecdotes that help the overall flow of the book and I could go through them all but it would take a billion different posts. Just read the book.

Murphy's book focuses on the Chicago Cubs and New York Giants pennant race, which also included the Pittsburgh Pirates. The rivalry was fierce and real. These guys didn't fiegn any feelings because they really hated each other. The pennant race was also pretty fierce. The season itself is pretty grueling, but add in the intrigue and brutality of having to travel by train across the Rust Belt on road trips and play in all kinds of conditions with rowdy, drunk and often dangerous fans in your back pocket.

The drama surrounding the final week of play that led to the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. But we all know the Series was won when the Cubs downed the New York Giants behind the great Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown.

The most fascinating part of the book was going onto Baseball Reference and reseaching these players. The careers put up by Cy Young, Mathewson, Wagner, Cobb, Brown and others are simply mind boggling. They're unreal.

This is an excellent book. If you love baseball, if you love the circus that surrounds it, this is a perfect book. Seemingly, the stories and environment are another world, almost fiction. It's almost hard to believe that this was only 100 years ago.

Past Reviews
"The Boys of Crenshaw"