Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants

Description

The 1911 New York Giants stole an astonishing 347 bases, a record that still stands more than a century later. That alone makes them special in baseball history, but as Maury Klein relates in Stealing Games they also embodied a rapidly changing America on the cusp of a faster, more frenetic pace of life dominated by machines, technology, and urban culture. Baseball, too, was evolving from the dead-ball to the live-ball era--the cork-centered ball was introduced in 1910 and structurally changed not only the outcome of individual games but the way the game itself was played, requiring upgraded equipment, new rules, and new ways of adjudicating. Changing performance also changed the relationship between management and players. The Giants had two stars--the brilliant manager John McGraw and aging pitcher Christy Mathewson--and memorable characters such as Rube Marquard and Fred Snodgrass; yet their speed and tenacity led to three pennants in a row starting in 1911. Stealing Games gives a great team its due and underscores once more the rich connection between sports and culture.

Maury Klein is renowned as one of the finest historians of American business and economy. He is the author of many books, including A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II; The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America; and Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island. Klein lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.

Mr. Klein's broad historical knowledge is at play here as he often moves outside the lines to talk about the culture, economics and even the disasters of the time . . . [his] achievement is to let us view early-20th-century America through the prism of baseball. * Wall Street Journal * [A] thorough account of the 1911 New York Giants . . . [Klein] recounts the Giants' evolution into a dynasty that went on to win three straight pennants, beginning in 1911. Klein writes for the serious baseball fan, and . . . offers thought-provoking details of the drastic changes baseball underwent at the time, both on the field and in the boardrooms. * Publishers Weekly * Veteran nonfiction author Klein uses his familiarity with the early twentieth century to contextualize this account of legendary baseball manager John McGraw and his 1911 New York Giants. It is fortunate that, while a baseball expert, Klein is primarily a business historian and, thus, is able to neatly fit the sport into the cultural history of the times--Progressivism, the automobile, the airplane, and so on . . . A well-written and absorbing account of an often-overlooked baseball season. -- Mark Levine * Booklist * A robust portrait of what the sport was like during the dead-bill era. * BookPage * Populated by memorable and brilliant characters . . . [Stealing Games] gives a great--yet overlooked--team and season their due. * Examiner.com, "A Look as Some of This Year's Most Notable Books" * Maury Klein has created a heavily researched and beautifully written book that skillfully blends a wealth of statistics with the human side of the story as he articulates the tale of the 1911 New York Giants. Stealing Games is a must read for every serious baseball fan. * RunSpotRun.com * Klein's book reads like a fairy tale . . . If you haven't given Boyle's law much thought since the Reagan revolution, reading Klein will reward you with an excellent course in heat, electricity, and magnetism, at very little cost to your composure. -- Jill Lepore * The New Yorker on THE POWER MAKERS * This story of how America became the 'great arsenal of democracy' is the subject of A Call to Arms, and I can't imagine it being told more thoroughly, authoritatively or definitively. * The Washington Post on A CALL TO ARMS * [A] magisterial account. Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, this marvelous book tells an epic story . . . It deserves a spot on the bookshelf alongside David Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom From Fear as the definitive rendering of the World War II home front. * Cleveland Plain Dealer on A CALL TO ARMS *