The World's Fastest Man

Kranish, Michael. The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero New York: Simon and Schuster 2019. Print.

First Sentences:

 

On the clear, brisk Saturday afternoon of December 5, 1896, an unusual pair of men strode to New York City's Madison Square Garden, where thousands would soon assemble for one of the era's greatest sporting events.

Description:

On a bike path near my house is a plaque detailing the life and sports achievements of Marshall "Major" Taylor, a Black bicycle racer in the 1890s - early 1900s era. I had never heard of him and, after reading some of the details of his achievements, just had to explore the story behind this man. This quest led me to Michael Kranish's The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero,

Just to set the scene for you. Imagine for a moment the world of the 1880s: no radio, no television, no automobiles, no airplanes, not even everyday bicycles. The Penny-Farthing bike had just been introduced, the one with a gigantic front wheel and a tiny wheel in the back. There were extremely popular as the fastest form of transportation available. Women were allowed to ride them in public as well.

This was also the age of the US Supreme Court's Plessy vs. Fergeson decision, the "separate but equal" discrimination case that would usher in the Jim Crow attitude and laws of prejudice and ill-treatment of minorities nationwide.

Marshall Taylor at that time was a poor Black child growing up in Indianopolis. His father had secured a job as a carriage driver for a wealthy White family, and Marshall accompanied him because the family had a similarly-age boy in need of a playmate. 

Taylor became part of that family, receiving the environment, food, education, and gifts exactly as his rich friend received. One gift was a new bicycle which Taylor soon mastered, perfecting trick-riding as well.

It was Mark Twain who, after describing his many crashes as he learned to ride a high-wheeler, wrote: "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."

Taylor secured a position at a local bicycle shop. Hundreds of these design/sales/repair shophad sprung up across the country, including the Wright brothers who started designing bicycles abd later flying machines in their own shop. While performing tricks at the shop to attract customers, decked out in a military-style jacket, Taylor received the nickname "Marshall."

There, Taylor was noticed by a world champion professional rider, Louis de Franklin "Birdie" Munger, once the fastest bicyclist in the world. Munger, near the end of his competition days, took Taylor under his wing and introduced him to Munger's own experimental bicycle with equal-sized, inflatable tires. 

Munger trained Taylor and entered him in his first race at age 18, much to the surprise of Taylor who did not know he would be competing that day. Incredibly, Taylor won and his career as a competitive bicylist began.

These are just the first few pages of this incredible story of Taylor, a poverty-stricken Black youth who, at the turn of the century and duting the birth and mania for bicycles, competed and won sprint (1/2 - 1 miles) races all over the country and world to attract the attention and paying spectators to his competitions. 

Of course, he experienced jealous riders, bigotry, and the pitfalls of travel and riches. Taylor devoted himself to new physical fitness and weight training exercises, and embraced a highly restricted diet, training techniques unknown in that era. On top of everything else, he promised his church deacons he would never race on Sundays. He even had to overcome his frequent failure to properly count his laps, often pulling up thinking he had won the race when he still had a lap or two to go, and had to sprint to catch up to the field and win.

Taylor's competitors made him a marked man, cutting him off, trying to knock over his bike, hoping to make him crash at full speed. Taylor soon realized that every time he went on the track his life was endangered.

But what a story author Kranish presents us, full of hope, frustration, inspiration, danger, and challenges of bicycle racing in those days, along with a well-researched description of society, the evolution of bicycles, and the eventual entrance of the automobile. 

Journey back in time to follow one forgotten man's rise to international fame on a two-wheeled contraption. It is well worth your time.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Krabb, Tim. The Rider  

Fascinating modern memoir of an Irish bicycle racer who carefully details his thoughts, strategies, competitor evaluation, and dreams throughout several arduous races. (Soon to be reviewed.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Library

Kells, Stuart. The Library: A Catalog of Wonders. Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

If a library can be something as simple as an organized collection of texts, then libraries massively pre-date books in the history of culture. Every country has a tradition of legends, parables, riddles, myths and chants that existed long before they were written down. Warehoused as memories, these texts passed from generation to generation through dance, gestures, and word of mouth.


Description:

Many of you know me as someone who loves books about books, whether book reviews, authors, libraries, collectors, dictionaries, reading, even book theft. Yes, I'm all in on anything about pages and their words. 

So when I picked up Stuart Kells The Library: A Catalog of Wonders, well, sparks flew and time stood still as I dove hopelessly into its detailed history of the printed word, the famous collections, and the men and women who assembled and guarded over them until the collections were broken up, destroyed, or simply forgotten.

Author Kells, as "a young academic working glumly at a social research instutite," found at a lunchtime book sale an ancient copy of Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, published during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I of England. The book's publisher, John Fry, preserved rare books and documents from centuries past, igniting in Kells an interest in learning more about Fry publications. 

Kells soon became a bookman himself, visiting hundreds of libraries, whether public, academic, or medieval. His explorations included modest private collections like one priceless set of books "stored in a woodshed," and one belonging to a hoarder "who cut an indoor pathway to his bathtub, where his most prized possessions were kept." Kells learned:

Every library has an atmosphere, even a spirit. Every visit to a library is an encounter with the ethereal phenomena of coherence, beauty, and taste.

In The Library, Kells shares his found treasures as well as his musings about book collections. He covers the first libraries, oral histories and song lines, all of which collected and shared the earliest cultural knowledge; the mighty Alexandria library; and Benedictine monasteries whose monks devoted their lives to gathering, copying and illustrating religious works (producing large, heavy tomes like The Devil's Bible which weighed in at 74.8 kilograms). 

Kells reveals esoteric facts like the transition from clay tablets to papyrus, to parchment, to paper, and the changes required of libraries to store these various formats. Shelves had to become shorter in length and stronger to prevent sagging, and also become more uniform in height.

There are chapters on the lost libraries which suffered their complete demises via fires, floods, looting, and general neglect. It is heart-breaking to read about the early libraries which carefully collected and preserved fragile scrolls, manuscripts, and books, only to see them destroyed and the information lost forever.

Along the way we learn from the inexhautable Kells that:

• Papyrus is a terrible material for preserving texts. Without a large and unwavering commitment to conservation and copying, a library of papyrus scrolls will readily and unceremoniously disintegrate; 

• Cuneiform was written and read left to right; Arabic right to left; Chinese top to bottom; and Ancient Greek, for a time, back and forth ("boustrophedon" or "ox-turning"), like plowing a field;

• America's major libraries were doubling en size every trwenty years from the 1870s to the 1940s, and every fifteen years after that.

• Gutenberg, although almost finished the first printing of his magnificant Bible, was sued by his financial backer for proceeding too slowly. Gutenberg lost the case, had his shop and presses confiscated, and was ruined;

• The British Museum's domed reading room has secret doors. To maintain the impression  of an unbroken series of books around the walls, the dome's pillars and access doors are painted with false book-backs;

• Schusseried Abby solved the problem of untidy and uneven volumes (and the problem of damage from light) by storing its books in cabinets whose doors are painted with idealized volumes.

• Passionate about making and sailing paper boats, the poet Shelley could not resist turning [book] fly leaves -- along with letters, newspapers, and banknotes -- into little ships.

• [In 1968 at Northwestern University] a domino effect toppled twenty-seven ranges, spilling 264,000 volumes, splintering solid oad chairs, flattening steel footstools, shearing books in hald, destroying or damaging more than 8,000 volumes;

• A professor...from Ohio State University, stole pages from a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Vatican Library. The manuscript had once belonge to Petrarch.

I passed many an hour pouring over interesting chapters on "Vandals," "Book Machines," "Fantasy Libraries," "The Folger Shakespeare Library," "The Best and Worst Librarians in History," "Libraries for the Future," and "Death" (about people who died in their libraries). 

So you see there is plenty to nerd out about in Kells' wonderful book. If you are into books, collections, and the people who create (and destroy) them, then The Library is the ultimate book for you.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Conaway, James. America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress 1800-2000.

History of one of the greatest libraries of the current age, The United State Library of Congress. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Will in the World

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: Norton. 2004. Print.

First Sentences:

As a young man from a small provincial town -- a man without independent wealth, without powerful family connections, and without a university education -- moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. His works appeal to the learned and the unlettered, to urban sophisticates and provincial first-time theatergoers. He makes his audiences laugh and cry; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety....How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?


Description:

I picked up Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare knowing nothing about the author or his book. I was just another reader interested in the mysterious background of William Shakespeare and how he possibly could have lived and created his exquisite body of historic, romantic, and thrilling works of literature after coming from a relatively small town with little education or travel. At least, those were the assumptions and subsequent questions offered by many historians

Author Greenblatt, however, is different. He delves deeply into historical documents and social norms of the sixteenth century to postulate about the forces behind Shakespeare's life and the elements that affected his growth and decisions.

For example, Greenblatt reveals primary documents about Shakespeare's father, John, showing him to be an important municipal office-holder in Stratford, a man who tries to enforce order between the Catholic residents who suddenly had to face the incoming Protestants in a world now enforced by the new Protestent Queen Elizabeth. Later John was documented to be a failed glovemaker whom William worked for, although obviously John's life failed to excite his son to pursue the same career choice.

Also, I didn't know Stratford was a fairly important city that drew traveling performers. William probably was exposed to the theater and likely even helped with general chores for any short-handed company. There are records that he offered his services to the traveling King's Company which found themselves short an actor after their leading player was killed in a drunken fight. Performance reviews from that period testified that William distinguished himself on the stage and possibly escaped Stratford with that company when it moved on toward London.

Other revelations included:

• Shakespeare likely attended King's New School in Stratford, reserved for children of means, receiving instruction from 7am - 6pm six days a week twelve months a year, mostly focusing on Latin "which clearly aroused and fed Will's inexhaustible craving for language";
  

• At school "virtually all schoolmasters agreed that one of the best ways to instill good Latin in their students was to have them read and perform ancient plays";

• Anne Hathaway, his bride, was eight years older than the 18-year-old Will when they were hurriedly married, without the accepted delay of publicizing banns. Church records showed their daughter Susanna was baptized six months later. The couple soon had two other children, one of whom, Hamnet, died young. Anne was not mentioned in Shakespeare's will except that she would receive their "second-best bed," the majority of Shakespeare's wealth and property going to his daughter Susanna;

• Shakespeare in his early twenties left Stratford, wife Anne, and his three children for unexplained reasons. Greenblatt shows evidence that William might have been in trouble with the law for poaching deer on a wealthy estate near Stratford and had been forced to flee;

• Later, during one of the frequent bubonic plague epidemics, all London theaters were closed. To earn income, Shakespeare accepted a commission to write many of his 154 sonnets. It is still unclear who financed him or to whom the poems referred to, whether his patron, a young man, or an unknown dark lady;

• When the ground lease for the theater where they performed was not renewed by the owner (who controlled the land but not the structures), Shakespeare, his company, and their crew snuck onto the theater grounds one night in December, 1598, dismantled the entire theater, carted it across the frozen Thames river, and re-constructed it in the new location. This became The Globe. The new theater, financed by Shakespeare himself, was an octagonal building with a huge stage, and could seat over 3,000 people;

In London, William probably attended many theatrical performances of contemporary playwrights, including those of his chief rival Christopher Marlowe. He observed works that playwrights presented which did and did not please audiences. Shakespeare moved away from the current broad morality plays, giving his own characters an intensified complexity and humanness rather than one-dimensional aspects. 

Shakespeare had to engage with the deepest desires and fears of his audience, and his unusual success in his own time in his own time suggests that he succeeded brilliantly. Virtually all his rival playwrights found themselves on the straight road to starvation; Shakespeare, by contrast, made enough money to buy one of the best houses in the hometown to which he returned in his early fifties, a self-made man.

I loved reading the original source records that Greenblatt dug up, which support or disprove theories about Shakespeare.  Each item is carefully examined, put into historical context, and then applied to Shakespeare's life to provide logical conclusions about the playwright and his influences.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in sixteenth century life, playwriting, and, of course, The Bard himself. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.   

The absolute best and highly-readable deep dive into every Shakespeare play, with historical, literary, and cultural explanations to key words, phrases, and plots. So great I read it from cover to cover, and re-read it before watching any Shakespeare play to catch all the references and subtleties. Wonderful. HIghest recommendation. (Previously reviewed here)

  

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title.

(And you can also read an introduction to The First Sentence Reader.)

The Navajo Code Talkers

Paul, Doris A. The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh: Dorrance 19739. Print.

First Sentences:

Every syllable of my message came through. Sometimes we had to crawl, had to run, had to lie partly submerged in a swamp or in a lagoon, or in the dead heat, pinned under fire. But there was no problem. We transmitted out messages under any and all conditions.

Description:

I've always been fascinated (but not good at solving) codes. Over the years, however, dedicated amateurs and professional code-breakers have broken all codes. All, that is, except one: the Navajo code utilized by America during World War II.

Doris A. Paul's The Navajo Code Talkers is the definitive history of this code and the men who created and successfully employed it. Extensive interviews with the Navajo Code Talkers gives the narrative a deeply personal account of each man's commitment to the program. reflecting the intense, maybe desperate need for the code to work.

The Navajo nation, in an edict from their Tribal Council at Window Rock in June, 1940, expressed their commitment to "aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict." After the official call to arms went out, 

Navajo men appeared at their agencies, carrying old muskets and hunting rifles, asking where they could fight the enemy. Many were turned away, heartbroken and humiliated that they could not fight because they could not speak English.

But those who spoke English were recruited to counteract the Japanese proclivity to break any English code. During close fighting, messages containing vital information about positions of troops, coordination of attack times, and battle news had to be delivered quickly, with no time for transcription of complex codes. A simple, unbreakable, easily transported code was needed.

Previously, Choctaws had been employed briefly during World War I to simply relay messages via telephone to stymie German interception. Later, Comanches, Creek, Choctaw, Menominee, Chippewa, and Hopi were used as communicators, but in the limited capacity of speaking only their own language. What was needed was an untranslatable Native American language, but updated by creating new terms for military items like "tank," "machine gun," "barrage," etc.

The Navajo language was suggested as the perfect platform:

The Navajo tongue is an extremely difficult language to master, and should a non-Navajo (particularly German or Japanese) learn to speak it, counterfeiting its sounds would be almost impossible.

Twenty-nine Navajo men were recruited from reservation schools and trained by the Marines for a pilot program. For some, this was the first time off the reservation. Firsthand accounts from interviews with the original Navajo Code Talkers revealed the challenges, expectations, and actual dangers to their jobs:

We wrung our minds dry trying to figure out words that would be usable, that would not be too long, and that could be easily memorized. After all, in the heat of battle, the code talker would have no time to take out a chart and look up vocabulary for an urgent message.

A sample alphabet and terms are reproduced in the book, containing examples like:

"Gini" (literally "Chicken Hawk") is the Navajo word created for "Dive Bomber" 

"Be-al-doh-cid-da-hi (sitting gun) = Mortar" 

"Joy-sho" (buzzard) = Bomber  

"Lo-tso" (whale) = Battleship

"Toh-yil-kal" (Much Water) = River 

"Tsisi-be-wol-doni" (bird shooter) = Anti-Aircraft 

The Code Talkers worked eight hours a day with walkie-talkies under field conditions. They had to remember this new vocabulary, speak into the 80-pound radio sets, and quickly, accurately translate incoming messages. After training, code talkers were utilized to request medical supplies, coordinate troop movements, and relay operational orders.

I found the recollections of surviving code talkers incredibly interesting for painting a picture of life in war in which they contributed a vital part. There was real pride in accomplishment, as well as humor in their voices. They were at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Okinawa, the Solomon Islands, and many more places, bringing a tense aspect of the war alive for me. 

I recommend this for readers interested in the lives and contributions to our country by Native Americans, the development of a unique code, and World War II as told by those men who were there.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

McKay, Sinclair. The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park. 

For the first time, the an in-depth look people behind the super-secret operation that broke the Enigma code and shortened the war by two years, saving millions of lived. (previously reviewed here.) 

Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma.   

The man and his team who cracked the German Enigma code in World War II to change the course of the War.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

I Was Right on Time

O'Neil, Buck. I Was Right on Time. New York: Simon & Schuster 1996. Print.

First Sentences:

Call me Buck.


Description:

Since it is nearing the end of summer and therefore the baseball season, I thought fans might enjoy this highly entertaining, first-hand account of the Negro Leagues as written by a player from that era. Buck O'Neil's I Was Right on Time offers an insider's look at and stories about the players, teams, stadiums, and fans, along with the quirks of each one as remembered by O'Neil, an actual Negro League player, featured storyteller on the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee.

 

O'Neil, using his conversationally casual writing style, takes us on his personal journey from his boyhood days playing pick-up baseball games to his eventual signing to play with the mighty Kansas City Monarchs, considered to be one of the best Negro teams ever, with lineups that included Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Rube Foster. The Monarchs were the first team to play under the lights, mounted on telephone poles which gave them a home field advantage for any ball hit into the darkness above those low-level lights. Hde later became a scout and coach in the (White) major league.

And the stories are absolutely the best, particularly those featuring O'Neil's teammate, Satchel Paige. O'Neil laughs at the events that caused Paige to always refer to O'Neil as "Nancy." O'Neil also recounts when, in the Negro League World Series with the Homestead Grays and their feared home-run hitter, Josh Gibson, Paige intentionally walked the bases loaded just to face Gibson in a critical situation to see who was the best. Or the time Paige told all his fielders to leave their positions and come to the mound while he went about striking out the side.

O'Neil writes about players with colorful nicknames: Sea Boy, Gunboat, Steel Arm Davis, Ankleball Moss, Copperknee, Mosquito, Popeye, and Suitcase. Of course, there are anecdotes about the more famous Negro League players such as Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Frank Robinson (the first major league Black manager), Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson as well as some tremendously talented, if lesser known stars like Larry Doby,  Luke Easter, Smokey Joe Williams, Josh Gibson,and Cool Papa Bell ("So fast he could get into bed after switching off the light switch before the room got dark." Spoiler: Bell had noticed a slight in his hotel room's on/off switch, causing a slight delay before the lights went black. Bell won some money from a gullible Paige for that neat trick).

 

And O'Neil clears up many misconceptions, such as that the one that Negro League players were inferior to white major leaguers. O'Neil compares all-star lineups from each league and concludes the Negro players would have a strong chance to beat their White counterparts. Also, his league did not play make-shift games in rag-tag environments with poor equipment as so often was portrayed in movies. Negro Leaguers in fact played established schedules in up-to-date ball parks, cheered on by fans that rivaled the major league parks in attendance numbers.

O'Neil has plenty of stories as well from his own later career as a major league coach and scout. I particularly gasped when, while in Mississippi scouting for the Chicago Cubs, O'Neil once got lost looking for the Jackson State-Grambling game and ended up at an unknown field where the Klu Klux Klan was holding a fund-raising rally in white robes and full hooded regalia.

As a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, O'Neil was instrumental in petitioning the Hall to consider including Negro League players initially not eligible for the Hall. Later, he and the Veterans Committee were tasked to come up with the historic Negro League players worthy  to be considered for Hall inclusion. Luckily, O'Neil had either played with, coached, or at least heard about most of the best men from the past.

 

But O'Neil also inserts a few examples of the prejudices facing him and these players, from restaurants to hotels to press coverage, that still go on as he wrote this book.

I still hear African-American players referred to as "articulate," as if we should be surprised a black man speaks so well. I still see a black player labeled as an underachiever, while a while player who carries the same stats is called an overachiever. Joe DiMaggio? Why, when people talk of him, they talk of his grace and his intelligence and his consistency. Willie Mays? He was "naturally gifted," as if he didn't have to work as hard as DiMaggio to be come a great ballplayer. Poppycock. From 1949-1962, eleven of the fourteen National League MVP trophies went to black men, and all of them, including Mays, Aaron, and Banks, worked damn hard to get those trophies.

But for the most part, O'Neil revels in the wonderful opportunity he had to be a part of this league and play with these men who were heroes in their communities. It's a warm, funny, honest depiction of that era, one that any fan (or anyone else) interested in fascinating stories about bigger-than-life personalities playing the game they loved.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It.  

The definitive book of early baseball in the late 1800s through the early1900s as told through oral interviews with the men who played the game then. (previously reviewed here)

The Baseball 100

Posnanski, Joe. The Baseball 100. New York: The Athletic. 2021. Print.

First Sentences:

There are many words we sportswriters use way too often. We might write that something quite believable is 'unbelievable" and that something that falls well into the realm of the possible is actually "impossible." But, if I had to guess, I would say that most of all we use the word "unique" too often.

    [Comments on Ichiro Suzuki, the first player profiled - rank #100.]


Description:

It never gets old to discuss the greatest baseball players of all time. Ranking the Top 100 adds an even greater challenge. But backing up an all-time greatest list with statistics, first-hand observations, comparisons, and commentary from articles, books, interviews, and other relevant resources makes a strong case for which players and rankings shake out in a convincing Top 100 list.

In The Baseball 100, writer Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, New York Times, etc. fame, presents his own well-researched list of choices for the greatest players of all time. And it is a compelling, convincing, fascinating, detailed, and astonishing lust. While I personally am no longer the biggest baseball fan, I absolutely loved reading about the players I have heard about or even watched play in my younger days.

The book is more than just Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio, Berra, Mays, and other familiar names. No, Posnanski introduces the cases for less-famous (to me, at least) Bullet Rogan (#92), Charlie Gehringer (#87), Kid Nichols (#82), Monte Irvin (#69), Smokey Joe Williams (#62), Arky Vaughan (#61) and Oscar Charleston (unbelievably #5!). Each player gets 5-8 pages of stories, stats, quotes, media coverage, and interviews to substantiate Posnanski's case for their inclusion on this list.

And what a page-turner this book it, all 869 pages of it. I couldn't stop myself from reading about childhood heroes and learning about unknowns who with their dazzling skills made significant marks. I loved reading about their childhoods, with overbearing (Mantle #11) or gentle fathers (Mathewson #36); rich (Cobb #8) or poor (Aaron #4); naturally gifted (Mays #1) or driven but possessing fewer skills (Rose #60); good-looking (Williams #6) or short and squat (Berra #43); Jewish (Koufax #70) or racist (Collins #29); young (Feller age 16 #55) or Paige (age 58+ #10). Every player is given a detailed analysis and a recap of his moments of glory.

  

[Probably just listing these players' rankings might raise some arguments in any dedicated reader's mind, but that what makes this book wonderful.] Here are some highlights:

• Reggie Jackson #59 - "I didn't come to New York to be a star. ...I brought my star with me."
• Warren Spahn #49 - always wanted to be a hitter, not a pitcher until he saw his high school team's first baseman (Spahn's position) and said, "That guy is a lot better than I am" and decided then and there to become a pitcher.
• Yogi Berra #43 - had only 12 strikeouts in the entire 1950 season.
• Nap Lajoie #39 - under "fixed" conditions, went 8 for 8 on the last day of the season to beat Cobb for the batting title and win a new car.
• Satchel Paige # 10 - threw rocks as a boy to protect himself from gangs. "Rocks made a real impression on a kid's head or backside," he said.
• Jimmie Foxx #33 - after retirement from baseball at age 37, coached a women's baseball team and was the inspiration for the Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) character in the film, A League of Their Own.
• Johnny Bench #30 - caught a fast ball bare-handed just to convince his pitcher he had no speed that day.
• Pop Lloyd #25 - played catcher one game for the Macon Acmes. Since the team couldn't afford catching equipment, he played without a mask, knee or chest protectors, winding up with two swollen eyes and bruises all over his body. That was when he became a shortstop.
• Ricky Henderson # 24 - Jim Murray wrote of Henderson's squatting batting stance, "He has a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart."
• Lefty Grove #22 - in his first game, age 19, he pitched seven inning and struck out 15; in the second game he threw a no-hitter and struck out 18
• Tris Speaker #18 - played so shallow in center field that he made 450 assists (a record never to be broken - second is Mays with less than half that number). He also made six unassisted double plays.
• Stan Musial #9 - would go up to strangers celebrating in a restaurant, borrow a $1 bill, fold it into a ring, and slip it onto the fan's finger just to add to their fun and memories. He also carried a harmonica with him everywhere, but could only play four songs.
• Ty Cobb # 8 - in 1947, age 60, he was asked at an old timers' game what he would hit in modern baseball. "About 300," he said, "but you've got to remember I'm 73 years old."
• Walter Johnson #7 - A batter who faced him "saw (or didn't see) two fastballs go by for strikes and headed back to the dugout. 'You've got another strike coming,' the umpire shouted to the player. 'I don't want it,' the hitter said. 'I've seen enough.'"
• Ted Williams #6 - could "hear a single boo in a Fenway Park filled with cheers."
• Henry Aaron #4 - as a kid practiced hitting with a broomstick and a bottle cap.
• Babe Ruth #2 - in 1920 was sold by Boston to the "lamentable New York Yankees who had never won a single pennant in their entire existence."

I have dozens more of quotes I'd marked while reading, but I'll stop here. Suffice to say, it's a fantastic book for any baseball aficionado or even for a casual fan interested in human stories, history, culture, jargon, and even a bit of baseball. Get it now to read or pass on to someone you love. They will love you back for a long time as they work their way through the players' profiles ...each and every one of them.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams.   

Simply wondrous oral history of the Negro Leagues as told through interviews with the men who played the game in those days of segregation. Real baseball lingo, lore, and memories here. Fantastic peek into that era, its players, and their baseball lives.

 

Tip of the Iceberg

Adams, Mark. Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. New York: Dutton, 2018. Print.

First Sentences:

On March 25, 1899, a gentleman from New York City arrived unannounced at the Washington D.C. office of C. Hart Merriam. At the age of forty-three, Merriam had already been practicing science seriously for three decades, dating back to some unauthorized taxidermy performed on his sister's dead cat.

 

Description: 

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman commissioned an exploration trip to Alaska's inner seaway passage. He included experts in a variety of fields, from geology to glaciology to botany to cartography to literature. Harriman's purpose was to have these men explore, document, and discovery interesting phenomena from this 3,000-mile voyage up the inner coast of Alaska.

The scientists included John Muir, glaciologist and wilderness expert; George Bird Grinnell, the founder of the Audubon Society; Georg Steller, naturalist; William Dall, the "dean of Alaska explorers"; Edward Curtis, photographer; and John Burroughs, writer and chronicler of the expedition. 

Harriman's mission had two personal goals:

• Enable scientists in various fields to survey the wonders of Alaska, enlarge their collections of specimens, and share their findings...
• Return...with a trophy bear

Now, over 100 years later, travel writer Mark Adams decided to re-trace the route of those scientists to understand what they first saw and how the Alaska of today had changed (or remained the same).

His trip is beautifully, often humorously chronicled in Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. Jumping between primary resources from Harriman's exploration, Alaskan history, and his own journey, Adams deftly manages to immerse readers into the past and present worlds of Alaska and its people.

For his trip, Adams chose to utilize the Alaska Marine Highway System of transport boats "designed to move people and vehicles long distances to remote places for a reasonable price."

Alaska's ferries have as much in common with Greyhound buses as with anything offered by Norwegian Cruise Line, but..with a little patience, Dramamine, and maybe a few time-saving shortcuts, it appeared possible to ride the three thousand miles from Washington State to Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutians, in about two months, the same time the Harriman Expedition took.

Breathtaking descriptions and adventures follow, and we lucky readers are fortunate to be able to sit close to Adams as he observes, researches, and interacts with this fascinating, challenging environment. Glaciers, indigenous people, totems, kayaks, mountains, and plenty of quiet contemplation are all on Adams' daily agenda.

Along the way, Adams learns valuable wisdom, such as how to deal with bears which are everywhere: play dead with brown bears, but fight back against black bears. Unfortunately, the only way to tell these bears apart is by a hump on the brown bear's back, (just reach around to feel for it while the bear is mauling you to determine your best course of action). The best advice he heard: "Bring a gun and someone slower than you."

Also, he learned through talking with local people and by personal observation that glaciers, which had once advanced 1,000 feet a day, were now located 63 miles back from where they were 250 years ago.

He visits Cordova, the scene of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and Whittier (population 200, many from American Samoa); "The Weirdest Town in Alaska" and inspiration for the television series, "Northern Exposure"; and an active volcano in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Too much else to share with you. If you are interested in Alaska, exploration, history, and people, this is the travel book for you.

[While kayaking in Glacier Bay] We were surrounded on all sides by the park's namesake rivers of ice flowing down from the mountains. Their frozen innards glowed a phosphorescent blue that eclipsed the cloudless sky above. A few times every hour, the giants discharged ice from their wrinkled faces -- crack, rumble, splash -- one of nature's most spellbinding performances.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ehrlich, Gretel. This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland.   

One of my favorite authors, Gretel Ehrlich, describes in her beautiful prose her life visiting and living in Greenland. She is the best at putting a reader into the environment, giving both history and current conditions, descriptions of the personalities she encounters, all the while examining her own feelings for the region and her place in it. Excellent.