Baseball, Chicago Style: A Tale of Two Teams, One City - Hardcover

Holtzman, Jerome; Vass, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566251702 ISBN 13: 9781566251709

Publisher: Bonus Books Inc, 2003

Synopsis

Baseball, Chicago Style explores the exciting, enticing, enduring and frequently frustrating panorama of our national pastime. For the first time the colorful saga of Major League Baseball in Chicago is wrapped between the covers of a single book sure to appeal to both Cubs and White Sox fans. No writers are better suited to survey it than Holtzman, a Hall of Fame member and the first official historian of Major League Baseball, and partner Vass, both of whom covered the teams for many seasons. When it comes to baseball tradition, Chicago is second to none, the sole city to embrace two major league teams without interruption from their founding to the present. The Cubs haven't missed a beat since 1876 as the oldest uninterrupted franchise in all pro sports, while the White Sox have challenged them without letup since 1901 for the backing of Chicago's vast fandom. The Cubs' best known exploit of the last 55 seasons may have been to not win the pennant in 1969, the year of the Great Collapse. Not even division titles in 1984 and 1989, or a "wild card" post-season excursion in 1998, all of which ended in tears, have displaced the soorow of 1969 in the collective momory of Cubs fans. But those who scoff at Cubs' tradition willfully ignore several glorious periods of their history. It's true they've won only two World Series (1907-08), but they've played in 10, far more than most teams. And their 1906 records of 116-36, for a percentage of .847, is unmatched in major league history. What's best-known nationally about the White Sox is that they "threw" the 1919 World Series to the cincinnati Reds. The dastardly act, commemorated in history, literature, film and television, transformed their previously innocuous nickname of Black Sox, based on the hue of their uniforms in previous seasons, into an invidious epithet which clings to them like a burr to corduroy. The tale of stinginess, greed and the betrayal of "the faith of 50 million people" forms the book's first chapter

About this title

Synopsis

This book explores the exciting, enticing, enduring and frequently frustrating panorama of America's national pastime. For the first time the colourful saga of Major League Baseball in Chicago is wrapped between the covers of a single book sure to appeal to both Cubs and White Sox fans. When it comes to baseball tradition, Chicago is second to none, the sole city to embrace two major league teams without interruption from their founding to the present day.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bonus Books Inc
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566251702
• ISBN 13: 9781566251709
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300