The Black Prince of Baseball

The Black Prince of Baseball
Author: Donald Dewey
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2016-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0803299664

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As America lurched into the twentieth century, its national pastime was afflicted with the same moral malaise that was enveloping the rest of the nation. Players regularly bet on games, games were routinely fixed, and league politics were as dirty as the base paths. Against this backdrop, Hal Chase emerged as one of the game's greatest players and also as one of its most scandalous characters. With charisma and bravado that earned him the nickname The Prince, Chase charmed his way across America, spinning lies in the afternoon, dealing high-stakes poker at night, and gambling with beautiful women until dawn. Most notoriously of all, he undermined his stature as the era's greatest first baseman by conniving with gamblers to fix games and draw teammates into his diamond conspiracies. But as Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella reveal in their groundbreaking biography, The Black Prince of Baseball, Chase was also a scapegoat for baseball notables with hands even dirtier than his. These included league officials who ignored facts in an attempt to pin the 1919 Black Sox scandal on him and--a previously unknown twist--the fabled John McGraw, who perjured himself on a witness stand against the first baseman. Although Chase, contrary to popular belief, was never banned from the major leagues, meticulous research by the authors implicates him in other shady enterprises as well, not least an attempt to blackmail revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. As The Black Prince of Baseball makes clear, in his protean talents and larcenies, Hal Chase personified all the excesses of Ragtime.

Hal Chase

Hal Chase
Author: Martin Donell Kohout
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2017-07-06
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786450436

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Hal Chase is considered by many to be one of the best first basemen ever to play the game of baseball. He was able to make the routine look spectacular, the spectacular look routine. But Chase will never have his plaque in Cooperstown because he has gone down in history as the biggest crook in baseball. Chase was repeatedly accused of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team, and various other crimes, yet with his relaxed nature he always managed to get off the hook for his misdeeds by working his charm. His major league career lasted from 1905 to 1919, and by the mid-1930s he was a destitute alcoholic living off friends. The last fifteen years of Chase's life saw him hospitalized repeatedly for a variety of ailments, living off a sister and brother-in-law who loathed him. This work traces the turbulent life and times of Hal Chase from his humble beginnings to his sad end.

Burying the Black Sox

Burying the Black Sox
Author: Gene Carney
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007-06-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1597971081

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New insight on baseball's most famous scandal

Black Sox in the Courtroom

Black Sox in the Courtroom
Author: William F. Lamb
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2013-03-29
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786472685

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A comprehensive, non-partisan account of the judicial proceedings spawned by the corruption of the 1919 World Series is badly needed. This book provides it. The narrative of events has been crafted from surviving fragments of the judicial record, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the proceedings, museum archives and, occasionally, the literature of the Black Sox scandal. Preceding the account of judicial events are a brief overview of the baseball gambling problem, a summary of the 1919 Series, and a discussion of post-Series events that presaged revelations of the Series fix. The grand jury proceedings, the criminal trial, and ensuing civil suits initiated by various of the banned players against the White Sox are then recounted in detail, accompanied by copious source citations. The book concludes with a survey of how Black Sox-related legal proceedings have been treated in scandal literature. The book does not purport to be the definitive account of the Black Sox scandal. Rather, it uniquely presents how the matter played out in court.

Double Plays and Double Crosses

Double Plays and Double Crosses
Author: Don Zminda
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2021-03-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1538142333

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"[An] essential study of a previously unexplored chapter of the game’s history. An important addition to baseball collections...." Library Journal, Starred Review The gripping story of how one of the most infamous scandals in American history—the Black Sox scandal—continued for nearly a year following the fixed World Series of 1919 until the truth began to emerge. The Black Sox scandal has fascinated sports fans for over one hundred years. But while the focus has traditionally been on the fixed 1919 World Series, the reality is that it continued well into the following season—and members of the Chicago White Sox very likely continued to fix games. The result was a year of suspicion, intrigue, and continued betrayal. In Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920, Don Zminda tells the story of an unforgettable team and an unforgettable year in baseball and American history. Zminda reveals in captivating detail how the Black Sox scandal unfolded in 1920, the level of involvement in game-fixing by notable players like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver, and the complicity of White Sox management in covering up details of the scandal. In addition, Zminda provides an in-depth investigation of games during the 1920 season that were likely fixed and the discovery during the year of other game-fixing scandals that rocked baseball. Throughout 1920, the White Sox continued to play—and usually win—despite mistrust among teammates. Double Plays and Double Crosses tells for the first time what happened during this season, when suspicion was rampant and the team was divided between “clean” players and those suspected of fixing the 1919 World Series.

The Half-Game Pennant of 1908

The Half-Game Pennant of 1908
Author: Charles C. Alexander
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1476665060

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The 1908 American League pennant race was described as a "a fierce and fluctuating fight." With five games left in the season, each of the league's four westernmost teams still had a shot at the championship. It was the height of the Deadball Era, noted for its spectacular pitching, low scoring, quickly played games, and memorable characters. It was also a time when professional baseball truly came into its own as America's national pastime. This lively account details a neglected chapter in the game's history.

California Baseball: from the Pioneers to the Glory Years

California Baseball: from the Pioneers to the Glory Years
Author: Chris Goode
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2009-10-14
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0557087600

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Beginning in the 1890s, the book examines the personalities, schools, teams, managers, and owners that helped shape baseball in California. It provides an insightful history of the game from the perspective of the California minor leagues, particularly the California League and Pacific Coast League. While focusing on the lives of a select group of pioneers integral to the sport in the Golden State, it reveals a representative and interesting sample of the achievements, events, and contributions spanning a half-century. Frank Chance, Walter Johnson, Hal Chase, Mike Donlin, Charlie Graham, Hap Hogan, Hen Berry, and Cy Moreing lead teams including Santa Clara College, St. Mary's, the Los Angeles Angels, Stockton Millers, San Jose Prune Pickers, Vernon Tigers, Santa Cruz Sand Crabs, Oakland Oaks, and San Francisco Seals. We begin in San Francisco in 1897 at the genesis of professional baseball in California ' at the San Francisco Examiner Baseball Tournament.

The Baseball Trust

The Baseball Trust
Author: Stuart Banner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199930295

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The Baseball Trust is about the origins and persistence of baseball's strange exemption from antitrust law. Told through a frequently riveting and always entertaining history of America's pastime, author Stuart Banner emphasizes the strategies baseball has used to achieve a protected legal status enjoyed by no other industry in America.

Johnny Evers

Johnny Evers
Author: Dennis Snelling
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-05-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786475919

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For more than a century Johnny Evers has been conjoined with Chicago Cubs teammates Frank Chance and Joe Tinker, thanks to eight lines of verse by a New York columnist. Caricatured as a scrawny, sour man who couldn't hit and who owed his fame to that poem, in truth he was the heartbeat of one of the greatest teams of the 20th century and the fiercest competitor this side of Ty Cobb. Evers was at the center of one of baseball's greatest controversies, a chance event that sealed his stardom and stole a pennant from John McGraw and the New York Giants in 1908. Six years later, following reversals and tragedies that resulted in a nervous breakdown, he made a comeback with the Boston Braves and led that team to the most improbable of championships. Spanning the time from his birth in Troy, New York, to his death less than a year after his election to the Hall of Fame, this is the biography of a man who literally wrote the book about playing second base.

A Companion to American Sport History

A Companion to American Sport History
Author: Steven A. Riess
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 921
Release: 2014-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1118609409

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A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history. Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)