Hal Chase: The Defiant Life and Turbulent Times of Baseball's Biggest Crook

by Martin Kohout

Hal Chase is considered by many to be one of the best first basemen ever to play the game of baseball. He was able to make the routine look spectacular, the spectacular look routine. But Chase will never have his plaque in Cooperstown because he has gone down in history as the biggest crook in baseball. Chase was repeatedly accused of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team, and various other crimes, yet with his relaxed nature he always managed to get off the hook for his misdeeds by working his charm. His major league career lasted from 1905 to 1919, and by the mid-1930s he was a destitute alcoholic living off friends. The last fifteen years of Chase's life saw him hospitalized repeatedly for a variety of ailments, living off a sister and brother-in-law who loathed him. This work traces the turbulent life and times of Hal Chase from his humble beginnings to his sad end.

Genres: Baseball

347 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2001

Reviews

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty solid narrative biography of Chase's semi-sordid life, seemingly better written than Dewey and Acocella's The Black Prince (at least based on a cursory skim of the latter). As is usually the case with these things, the de rigueur game recaps are snooze-worthy and can almost be skipped (except when Kohout is discussing instances in which Chase appears to have messed up a routine play). However, the material on Chase's early life and sad last days playing for peanuts on the Mexican border and then being maintained in a cottage on a farm he bought for his sister, much of it based on interviews with Chase's surviving relatives, is altogether excellent.