Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World Series » (First Edition)

Louis P. Masur is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American I nstitutions and Values at T rinity College in Hartford. He is the editor of Reviews in American History, one of the most widely read journals in its field. His books include 1831: Year of Eclipse and Autumn Glory: Baseball’s First World Series.

A suspenseful account of the glorious days a century ago when our national madness began

A post-season series of games to establish supremacy in the major leagues was not inevitable in the baseball world. But in 1903 the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates (in the well-established National League) challenged the Boston Americans (in the upstart American League) to a play-off, which he was sure his team would win. They didn't—and that wasn't the only surprise during what became the first World Series. In Autumn Glory, Louis P. Masur tells the riveting story of two agonizing weeks in which the stars blew it, unknown players stole the show, hysterical fans got into the act, and umpires had to hold on for dear life.

Before and even during the 1903 season, it had seemed that baseball might succumb to the forces that had been splintering the sport for decades: owners' greed, players' rowdyism, fans' unrest. Yet baseball prevailed, and Masur tells the equally dramatic story of how it did so, in a country preoccupied with labor strife and big-business ruthlessness, and anxious about the welfare of those crowding into cities such as Pittsburgh and Boston (which in themselves offered competing versions of the American dream). His colorful history of how the first World Series consolidated baseball's hold on the American imagination makes us see what one sportswriter meant when he wrote at the time, Baseball is the melting pot at a boil, the most democratic sport in the world. All in all, Masur believes, it still is.

Publishers Weekly

At the heart of this book by Masur (1831: Year of Eclipse) are eight in-depth, almost play-by-play, retellings of the games of the 1903 World Series between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Though the accounts of 100-year-old games can become tedious ("In the second inning, both teams went down easily"), for the most part Masur's storytelling skills ("He walked slowly, but not because of age. Pitchers always had a deliberate way about them") keep the book moving. Interspersed among the game recaps is a closely considered, detailed account of how the World Series was invented. Punctuated by chapters with titles like "War," "Peace," "Winter" and "Spring," Masur's presentation of the violent birth of the fall classic as the result of a bitter war between the established National League and upstart American League takes on a decidedly Yeatsian tone. Thankfully, the dense, political nature of these chapters is balanced by more colorful tales of the era, like Pittsburgh manager Fred Clarke being "pummeled" black and blue by an opposing player and the New York Giants' Christy Mathewson winning three games of a four-game regular season series versus the Pirates that demonstrate how much and how little the game has changed over the years. Despite a summer release in honor of the Series's centennial, Masur's work is a prime example of a winter baseball book: a story to stoke the fire of baseball lovers whose hope of a World Series title has become every fan's entitlement for the past century. Illus. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.