2021 Book Reading Summary

I have decided that, rather than continue to give each book I have read this year its own post, I would instead put together a summary of all the year's books, as I did last year. Listing the five books I had read and posted about previously, we have:

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday

1964 The Greatest Year in the History of Japan: How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan's Miraculous Rise From the Ashes by Roy Tomizawa

How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed by Thomas W. Gilbert

Marquard & Seeley by Noel Hynd

Now that I've listed my first five books of the year (you may check the blog to find the blog posts if you missed them and/or have an interest in reading them), here are summaries of what I read since then, starting with:

War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War by Randy Roberts & Johnny Smith

I haven't read a huge amount about the World War I era, but this very fine book co-written by Randy Roberts, a Purdue history professor, and Johnny Smith, a history professor and sports historian, covers the year 1918 very impressively, focusing on Boston and the nearby area, and several persons whose stories were all caught up in the turbulence of the time.

Pictured above is Charles Whittlesey, who grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, attended Williams College and Harvard and went off to New York to practice law. He joined the Army once the United States entered World War I and became one of America's foremost heroes of that conflict, although he ultimately was a tragic figure. 

The next significant figure who is featured in the book is Karl Muck (pictured below), the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the time. 

The third major figure is Babe Ruth (pictured below), who was a slugging pitcher for the Boston Red Sox at that point. 

As war raged in Europe, Americans found themselves taking sides. Germany's submarine warfare, in particular the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania in 1915, was causing Germany and German-Americans to become suspect in the minds of many. In an age that extolled 100 % Americanism, Germans were viewed as a subversive element to American values. Karl Muck became a target as involvement in the war became more likely. Once the United States entered the conflict in 1917, journalists such as John R. Rathom of the Providence Journal (pictured below), took aim at alleged German spies and plots in general, and Karl Muck and the Boston Symphony in particular. The orchestra itself contained many German musicians as well as Muck as the conductor. Controversy broke out over his unwillingness to have the orchestra play "The Star Spangled Banner" (not yet the official national anthem) during performances. 

 Ultimately, Muck's affair with Rosamond Young (pictured below), a socialite and talented soprano, led to his undoing. Muck, who was under investigation by the predecessor to the FBI, ultimately was arrested and placed in a detention camp for the duration of the war, although his wife stuck loyally beside him throughout.

Muck ended up a broken man who was forcibly deported to Germany following the war. His story is a sad one and well chronicled by the authors.

Charles Whittlesey became inspired to join the preparedness movement in the lead-up to war. The book details very well the development of Whittlesey's unit that drew so heavily on New Yorkers. The story of "the Lost Brigade" and Whittlesey's actions in command of that outfit is also well told in all its rugged detail.

He returned to America a firm believer in the necessity of re-integrating Germany into the community of nations and he supported President Wilson's policies. A Medal of Honor recipient, he was a pallbearer at the burial of the Unknown Soldier. He met willingly with families of deceased members of "the Lost Brigade" and kept their memories alive. Worn down by his war experience and family concerns and having gotten his affairs in order, he booked passage on a ship bound for Cuba later in 1921 and jumped overboard to his death.

The Muck and Whittlesey stories surround the chronicling of the champion 1918 Red Sox and their biggest star, Babe Ruth. There was uncertainty that there would be a 1918 baseball season due to the need for military manpower for the war effort. Some 90 % of the players were declared to be eligible for conscription and the Red Sox had lost eleven players to the military by the beginning of the year. Gambling that the season would happen, owner Harry Frazee swung a deal with the Philadelphia Athletics that added valuable new names to the Boston roster and put much-needed cash in the A's coffers. 

The story of George Herman Ruth, Jr., a product of the Pig Town section of Baltimore and the son of first-generation German parents is well outlined from a boyhood in which his saloon-keeping father couldn't control the youngster and he was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys where he played baseball well enough to draw the interest of the Baltimore Orioles, then a minor league club in the International League. A pitcher who could also hit, the cash-strapped Orioles sold him to the Red Sox in 1914. By 1918 he was one of the top pitchers in the American League, coming off of two 20-win seasons and prone to reckless behavior off the field.

In a season that ended up being shortened due to War Department needs (men of draft age were required to enlist or take war-related employment in shipyards or munitions factories), Boston manager Ed Barrow (pictured below) made the decision to use his best pitcher in the outfield and first base, while taking his turn on the mound every fourth day.

It worked out to a season in which he posted a 13-7 pitching record and batted .300 with a league-leading 11 home runs.    

On the eve of the opening game of the World Series between the Red Sox and Cubs in Chicago, a terrorist explosion tore through Chicago's Federal Building where members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, known as the Wobblies) had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for violation of the Espionage Act.

The Red Sox went on to win the World Series in six games with Ruth accomplishing more as a pitcher than with his bat. Unlike Charles Whittlesey and Karl Muck, his story was moving in an upward trajectory. 

The book does an outstanding job of chronicling this particular time period, with anxiety over threats, real and imagined stirring the public. The flu pandemic which struck during 1918 also merits mention, as it should, and then the armistice in November that brought the war to an end. Each of the stories pertaining to the three key figures is well researched and makes for interesting and informative reading. 

Moving on from there I read the first two books of a three-volume biography of Connie Mack.

Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball by Norman L. Macht

For many years, Connie Mack was among the most esteemed figures in American baseball. Born Cornelius McGillicuddy in East Brookfield, Massachusetts, he lived a very long life and was a key figure in the birth of the American League in 1901. The first volume of this outstanding and meticulous biography takes readers from his birth in 1862 up to his early years of success in the American League with the Philadelphia Athletics. 

Mack played in the National League, and in 1890 in the rebel Players' League, primarily as a catcher, and established himself as a smart and handy player. He became player/manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates (pictured below), following which he managed the Milwaukee Brewers, at that time a club in the minor Western League, which was the precursor to the American League.   

 Mack became manager, part-owner, and treasurer of the Philadelphia franchise in the new American League in 1901, having partnered with respected Philadelphia businessman Ben Shibe (pictured below). The club came to be called the Athletics.

A widower by this time, his first wife, Margaret, having died following the birth of their third child in 1892, the tall, thin, and  Mack had developed a network of people throughout organized baseball that would grow and allow him to develop a winning team, given his keen eye for talent. 

By 1902 he had a pennant-winning club, and in 1905 the Athletics won another pennant and lost the ensuing World Series to the New York Giants. In the dugout during games he wore a business suit with a starched collar and for headwear a derby, bowler, or straw hat while he managed the club. Never taking the field, he would send his captain or a coach to make pitching changes. Directing the action with scorecard in hand, he was a master of player positioning. 

The gentlemanly Mack also typically referred to his players by their given names, not nicknames (unless he was relating stories about them later), so pitcher "Rube" Waddell was George and  Native American pitcher "Chief" Bender was Albert.  The eccentric Waddell had already proven to be a headache to managers in his previous major league stops, but he produced very impressively for Mack.

Although typically pleasant and friendly, Mack could unleash colorful language, especially in reaction to poor play on the field. And while he adopted an easygoing managerial style, he disdained late-night carousing and heavy drinking which he considered to be disrespectful to fellow players and the club's fans. While not one to enforce curfews on the players, he always seemed to know what was going on with his players when off the field. 

The author details the early years of the American League and the Philadelphia Athletics very well, and typically devotes a chapter to each season, although he occasionally goes overboard in his praise for his subject. He refutes the widely-believed notion that Mack was excessively tight with money. He could be very generous with family and associates and was willing to pay for good talent.

The club built what was a state-of-the-art ballpark named Shibe Park (which eventually became Connie Mack Stadium) that opened in 1909.

From 1910 to 1914, the A's won four pennants and three World Series titles. In 1911 and '13 they defeated the John McGraw-managed Giants (McGraw and Mack are pictured together below). McGraw was a very different personality, although despite McGraw's tagging of the Athletics as "Connie Mack's white elephants", a put-down that Mack turned into a lasting symbol of the club, there came to be mutual respect between the two. 

Mack is shown in later years with a white elephant (the symbol of the A's) below.

After being swept by the Boston Braves in 1914, and with a new rival in the Federal League competing for talent, a time came for Mack and his club to make changes, which are dealt with in detail in the next volume.

Connie Mack: The Turbulent & Triumphant Years 1915-1931

Having developed a winning club that won the World Series three times in four years, Mack found himself faced with the rival Federal League and some dissension in the ranks that led to his dealing star second baseman Eddie Collins to the Chicago White Sox in 1915. Other significant departures would follow and, having been a dominant club at the beginning of the decade of the 1910s, the Athletics endured seven consecutive last-place finishes. 

On the personal level, Mack had remarried in 1910 and had four more children in his second marriage. He supported a large extended family and kept several retired players on the payroll in various roles.

Still a respected evaluator of players and developer of talent, Mack was able to sign some good players during the fallow years (although he had his share of disappointments as well), although he sold or traded much of them away due to financial needs. One thing that becomes clear in reading this volume, is how little the economics of major league baseball have changed in over a century. Even long before free agency, wealthy clubs were able to obtain talent from lower-echelon teams either through advantageous trades or outright purchase while driving up the market value of players. When Mack determined that a veteran player was no longer affordable, he would accept offers that helped his team's bottom line or that could add needed depth to the roster. It pained him to trade players that he truly wished to keep and who were popular with the fans, such as catcher Wally Schang. Following the Federal League challenge and the downturn in fortunes due to World War I, fans began returning (even before Babe Ruth began slugging home runs for the Yankees), and Mack was able to rebuild the A's into a winning team again during the 1920s. 

In the meantime, the scandal surrounding the 1919 World Series led to a long overdue overhaul of baseball's governance. The National Commission was replaced by a commissioner in the person of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (pictured below). This led to friction with Ban Johnson, the founder and president of the American League, with whom Mack had been a long-time ally, which ultimately led to Johnson's downfall. 

In the 1920s Mack began assembling the team that would return the Athletics to the baseball pinnacle once again. The infusion of catcher Mickey Cochrane, outfielder Al Simmons, pitcher Lefty Grove, and first baseman Jimmie Foxx (who started out as a catcher) fueled the club's return to respectability. Mack resisted developing a farm system for the A's, instead working out deals with independent minor league teams to develop individual players, which ultimately proved unworkable for maintaining a winning club. But at this point his method still yielded impressive results.

The A's won the pennant in 1929 and faced the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. The author explores in depth the events surrounding Mack's decision to start little-used veteran Howard Ehmke in Game 1, in which Ehmke struck out a then-record 13 batters in turning in a complete game win. In the sixth inning of Game 4, the A's, down 8-0, pulled off a 10-run rally that resulted in a 10-8 final score. The A's pulled off a lesser rally in Game 5 to finish off the Cubs. Mack's team repeated in 1930, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series in six games. 

In a 107-win season highlighted by Lefty Grove's 31-4 record (Grove and Mack are pictured together below), the Athletics made it three consecutive pennants in 1931. In a World Series rematch, the Cardinals turned the tables on the A's and won in seven games, largely thanks to the exploits of 21-year-old center fielder Pepper Martin. 

The author concludes with a chapter highlighting Mack's popularity with the public at this point in his long career with the A's. He was 68 years old during the 1931 season and was much admired as a manager and a key figure in America's national pastime. He maintained a wide-ranging correspondence, with many of his baseball correspondents serving as unofficial scouts. And his extended network of former players was a testament to his fairness and reasonableness as a manager, and the esteem in which they held him. 

I put off reading the third volume until now, desiring to switch gears with my reading as 2021 wound down and 2022 commenced. When I write about my 2022 reading, I will start with the book with which I ended the old year and began the new, Wild Swans by Jung Chang.