Pennant Races: Baseball at Its Best

Rating:
Summary: Riling Giants and Other Stories
Review: Pulitzer Prize winning sportswriter Dave Anderson of the New York Times supplies readers with a wide variety of stories about the leading pennant races in baseball history. His succinct sportswriter's prose is ideal to depict time ticking events in the hot, humid days of summer as races move toward dramatic climaxes. The winners will go on to the World Series while the losers go home to contemplate what went wrong.

Two crucial pennant races which came down to the wire involved instances where the Dodgers and Giants respectively became aroused as a result of slights. The first instance was in 1934, when New York Giants' first baseman and manager Bill Terry was summarizing his view of the upcoming National League pennant race with New York reporters. When asked about the Giants' bitter Gotham rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, then experiencing hard times, Terry smiled and exclaimed, "Are the Dodgers still in the league?"

As the pennant reached its crucial closing stages, and Terry's Giants were locked in a tight race with the "Gashouse Gang" St. Louis Cardinals with the Dean brothers, Joe Medwick, and playing manager Frankie Frisch,they concluded the season with two games at Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. Remembering the Terry slight, Casey Stengel, who would later win five straight world titles from 1949 to 1953 with the New York Yankees, relished the opportunity along with his players to knock their New York rivals out of the race. Stengel's Dodgers won both games and the Cardinals won the pennant, defeating the Detroit Tigers in seven games in the World Series.

The Dodgers failed to profit from history, since in 1951, seventeen years later, they defied the adage, "Never rile a Giant." After sweeping the Giants at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers taunted the team they believed to be out of the pennant. In the small Ebbets Field clubhouse the home and visiting teams were separated by a tissue paper wall. The Giants listened in helpless rage as Dodger manager Chuck Dressen and his team sang, shouted, and taunted the Giants. Jackie Robinson pounded a bat repeatedly against the wall.

Leo Durocher's Giants then came back from their presumed demise, winning 37 out of their last 44 games to finish in a first place tie with their hated rivals as the regular season ended. The immortal three game playoff ended with Bobby Thomson's 3-run homer off of Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca for a 5-4 victory and a Giant pennant, a blast known as "the hit heard round the world."

Another example of a presumed slight which helped change baseball history was in the second to last game of the 1949 season at Yankee Stadium. The Boston Red Sox moved into New York up one game, needing only a split with the Yankees to qualify to play the Dodgers in the World Series. Boston catcher Birdie Tebbets, a legendary bench jockey, chided Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto in the first game that the Red Sox would be starting their rookie fresh from college the next day. An angry Rizzuto walked back to the bench and repeated the comment. The inspired Yankees won both games and went on from there to defeat the Dodgers in five games in the World Series.

Anderson has plenty of interesting races to write about in addition to the aforementioned, including Gabby Hartnett's home run in the darkness in 1938 which propelled his Cub team to victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates, and ultimately the National League pennant, along with the 1908 pennant races, when Detroit won a cliffhanger in the American League and the Cubs prevailed in a playoff game against the Giants of John McGraw, a contest resulting from Johnny Evers's protest over Fred Merkle failing to touch second base after the apparent winning hit had enabled the Giants to prevail.

Rating:
Summary: Riling Giants and Other Stories
Review: Pulitzer Prize winning sportswriter Dave Anderson of the New York Times supplies readers with a wide variety of stories about the leading pennant races in baseball history. His succinct sportswriter's prose is ideal to depict time ticking events in the hot, humid days of summer as races move toward dramatic climaxes. The winners will go on to the World Series while the losers go home to contemplate what went wrong.

Two crucial pennant races which came down to the wire involved instances where the Dodgers and Giants respectively became aroused as a result of slights. The first instance was in 1934, when New York Giants' first baseman and manager Bill Terry was summarizing his view of the upcoming National League pennant race with New York reporters. When asked about the Giants' bitter Gotham rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, then experiencing hard times, Terry smiled and exclaimed, "Are the Dodgers still in the league?"

As the pennant reached its crucial closing stages, and Terry's Giants were locked in a tight race with the "Gashouse Gang" St. Louis Cardinals with the Dean brothers, Joe Medwick, and playing manager Frankie Frisch,they concluded the season with two games at Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. Remembering the Terry slight, Casey Stengel, who would later win five straight world titles from 1949 to 1953 with the New York Yankees, relished the opportunity along with his players to knock their New York rivals out of the race. Stengel's Dodgers won both games and the Cardinals won the pennant, defeating the Detroit Tigers in seven games in the World Series.

The Dodgers failed to profit from history, since in 1951, seventeen years later, they defied the adage, "Never rile a Giant." After sweeping the Giants at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers taunted the team they believed to be out of the pennant. In the small Ebbets Field clubhouse the home and visiting teams were separated by a tissue paper wall. The Giants listened in helpless rage as Dodger manager Chuck Dressen and his team sang, shouted, and taunted the Giants. Jackie Robinson pounded a bat repeatedly against the wall.

Leo Durocher's Giants then came back from their presumed demise, winning 37 out of their last 44 games to finish in a first place tie with their hated rivals as the regular season ended. The immortal three game playoff ended with Bobby Thomson's 3-run homer off of Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca for a 5-4 victory and a Giant pennant, a blast known as "the hit heard round the world."

Another example of a presumed slight which helped change baseball history was in the second to last game of the 1949 season at Yankee Stadium. The Boston Red Sox moved into New York up one game, needing only a split with the Yankees to qualify to play the Dodgers in the World Series. Boston catcher Birdie Tebbets, a legendary bench jockey, chided Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto in the first game that the Red Sox would be starting their rookie fresh from college the next day. An angry Rizzuto walked back to the bench and repeated the comment. The inspired Yankees won both games and went on from there to defeat the Dodgers in five games in the World Series.

Anderson has plenty of interesting races to write about in addition to the aforementioned, including Gabby Hartnett's home run in the darkness in 1938 which propelled his Cub team to victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates, and ultimately the National League pennant, along with the 1908 pennant races, when Detroit won a cliffhanger in the American League and the Cubs prevailed in a playoff game against the Giants of John McGraw, a contest resulting from Johnny Evers's protest over Fred Merkle failing to touch second base after the apparent winning hit had enabled the Giants to prevail.

Rating:
Summary: Worth maybe a library rental, but not a purchase.
Review: The author makes some good choices on which seasons to profile,such as 1908, 1951, 1991, etc. Also, he makes a pertinent point for all 1998-nuts, titling his chapter on 1993 "The Last Pure Pennant Race." However, the author is obviously prejudiced toward the era he grew up in, selecting no less than FIVE of the fourteen profiled from the 1940's. Indians only won the pennant because the Black Sox were throwing games down the stretch! 1964? You've got to be kidding! The Phillies experienced one of the all-time "crash-and-burn" moments in baseball history, losing their final ten games, allowing St. Louis to "back into" the pennant! The major factor in weighing the "all-time greatest pennant races" should hinge mainly on the fan excitement they create. Here, Anderson spends two of his choices on great collapses, where only the eventual winner's fans benefit; rather than picking two other races where BOTH teams played great ball down the stretch, giving fans in BOTH cities something to cheer about! The 1904 Boston-N.Y. American League race , or the 1915 Boston-Detroit AL race would have been much better choices. At any rate, I wasn't all that impressed with Anderson's writing style. It lacked tension, organization, and failed to present some of the really great races in a wider historical context. Mostly valuable for it's details of baseball's greatest and most suffocating pennant race, 1908.

Rating:
Summary: Worth maybe a library rental, but not a purchase.
Review: The author makes some good choices on which seasons to profile,such as 1908, 1951, 1991, etc. Also, he makes a pertinent point for all 1998-nuts, titling his chapter on 1993 "The Last Pure Pennant Race." However, the author is obviously prejudiced toward the era he grew up in, selecting no less than FIVE of the fourteen profiled from the 1940's. Indians only won the pennant because the Black Sox were throwing games down the stretch! 1964? You've got to be kidding! The Phillies experienced one of the all-time "crash-and-burn" moments in baseball history, losing their final ten games, allowing St. Louis to "back into" the pennant! The major factor in weighing the "all-time greatest pennant races" should hinge mainly on the fan excitement they create. Here, Anderson spends two of his choices on great collapses, where only the eventual winner's fans benefit; rather than picking two other races where BOTH teams played great ball down the stretch, giving fans in BOTH cities something to cheer about! The 1904 Boston-N.Y. American League race , or the 1915 Boston-Detroit AL race would have been much better choices. At any rate, I wasn't all that impressed with Anderson's writing style. It lacked tension, organization, and failed to present some of the really great races in a wider historical context. Mostly valuable for it's details of baseball's greatest and most suffocating pennant race, 1908.