Not only was it probably the most cutthroat pennant race in baseball history, it was also a struggle to define how baseball would be played. A Game of Brawl re-creates the rowdy, season-long 1897 battle between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Beaneaters. The Orioles had acquired a reputation as the dirtiest team in baseball. Future Hall of Famers John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and “Foxy� Ned Hanlon were proven winners—but their nasty tactics met with widespread disapproval among fans. So it was that their pennant race with the comparatively saintly Beaneaters took on a decidedly moralistic air.   Bill Felber brings to life the most intensely watched team sporting event in the country’s history to that time. His book captures the drama of the final week, as the race came down to a three-game series. And finally, it conveys the madness of the third and decisive game, when thirty thousand fans literally knocked down the gates and walls of a facility designed to hold ten thousand to watch the Beaneaters grind out a win and bring down baseball’s first and most notorious evil empire.

Babe Ruth, in his first season with the Yankees in 1920, was on pace to break the single-season home run record. In August Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was beaned by a pitch thrown by the Yankees' Carl Mays during a game in New York and died the next day. In September a grand jury convened in Chicago, and four White Sox players were called to testify about fixing the 1919 World Series.
Focusing on the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees, this book takes us back to a pivotal season when baseball was shaken by tragedy and scandal and when power shifted irretrievably from the teams' owners to a single commissioner. The struggle for the soul of baseball, both on the field and off, is the story of how the entire American League structure changed. Following the fortunes of baseball's stars of 1920, "Under Pallor, Under Shadow" shows us how a unique opportunity for reform was squandered and how the result was the transfer of authority from one powerful dictator (Ban Johnson) to another (Judge K. M. Landis). The first book to tie together the disparate elements of the 1920 pennant race, "Under Pallor, Under Shadow" shows us America's pastime at a critical moment in the nation's cultural history.

Between 1894 and 1896, the Baltimore Orioles acquired a reputation as the slickest, smartest, and dirtiest team in baseball. Behind the play of future Hall of Famers John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and Foxy Ned Hanlon, the Orioles had won three straight National League pennants heading into the 1897 season. Their style of play, however, met with widespread disapprobation among fans - the Oriole repertoire included deliberately hitting batters, tampering with the playing surfaces, interfering with opposing baserunners, and verbally assaulting anyone within earshot including the umpires, opposing players, and occasionally each other. the comparatively saintly Boston Beaneaters (themselves three-time champs before being knocked off by the Orioles in 1894), took on a decidedly moralistic flavor - the inveterate Orioles versus the benevolent Beaneaters. It was the most intensely watched team sporting event in the country's history to that time. Fittingly, the race came down to a three-game series between the two teams in the season's final week. down the gates and walls of a facility designed to hold 10,000 to watch the Beaneaters grind out a win and bring down baseball's first and most notorious evil empire.

Ever wonder whether Tiger Woods in his prime would have beaten Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, or Jack Nicklaus in their primes? And could any of them have beaten Babe Zaharias? Obviously, if Bobby Jones were returned to life and health and then given his old hickory-shafted mashie, persimmon-headed driver, and rubber-core ball in a match against Jordan Spieth, the outcome would be foreordained. But what if the impact of the training, equipment, courses, and traveling conditions could be neutralized in order to create a measurement? Now for the first time, questions are answered about the relative abilities of the greatest players in the history of professional golf. In The Hole Truth Bill Felber provides a relativistic approach for evaluating and comparing the performance of golfers while acknowledging the game's changing nature. The Hole Truth analyzes the performances of players relative to their peers, creating an index of exceptionality that automatically factors the changing nature of the game through time. That index is based on the standard deviation of the performances of players in golf's recognized major championships dating back to 1860. More than two hundred players are rated in comparison with one another, more than sixty of them in detail with profiles providing context on their ranking. For the dedicated golf fan, The Hole Truth is an engaging way to see in the numbers where their favorite golfers rank across eras and where current players like Rory McIlroy and Inbee Park compare to the game's greats.

"Picking up where Michael Lewis left off in "Moneyball, " he addresses the central questions of risk, reward, and value---on the field and off---and reveals what it takes to win."
---John Thorn, editor of "Total Baseball" Die-hard fanatics will enjoy this comprehensive collection of groundbreaking baseball strategies, analyses, statistics, and studies
This unique approach to understanding the "tried and true" methodologies of the game of baseball examines conventional elements like the steal, hit and run, and line-up construction. The Book on The Book offers an exciting critique of baseball by placing an actual dollar value on player performance and rating managers based on their on-field moves to determine who are the smartest tacticians.
No corner of the ballpark is left unturned as author Bill Felber explores the various methods of team-building, on-field values of players, the role and influence of the general manager in team success, and the importance of park effects. In the vein of the late Leonard Koppett and Bill James, Felber uses mathematical and statistical principles to evaluate the wisdom of standard baseball strategies. Illustrations and a refreshingly engaging style make The Book on The Book the new textbook of baseball analysis. "Full-blown fanatics will probably read the book straight through, but casual fans will find plenty of reward simply browsing through selected chapters, such as 'The Decline and Fall of the Starting Pitcher, ' 'Highly Paid Irrelevance, ' and 'Rating the General Managers.' "
---"BookPage"
"Well thought out and soundly based, this book could be used as a text for most current teams, who should be trying to keep up with those few enlightened ones that are using logic rather than guesswork and hope."
---Pete Palmer, coeditor of "The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia" and coauthor of "The Hidden Game of Baseball"
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"Baseball's 'Book'---the ever-expanding cloud of common wisdom about how the game should be played---has resisted challenge in part because it is unwritten. Ever since baseball began, experts have not been reading from the same page, let alone the same book. But now Bill Felber comes along to poke holes in the clouds and let some sunshine in."
---John Thorn, editor of "Total Baseball"
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