Baseball An Informal History

by Douglass Wallop

From it's rowdy beginnings in Brooklyn over a century ago to the current wild revival in national interest, from the Giants of the past to today's heroes - A born storyteller sets down the colorful saga of the sport that refused to die.

Required reading for fans of all ages and a marvelous introduction for anyone puzzled by the mystique of baseball!

- From the back of the 3rd printing.

Genres: Baseball

246 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1970

Reviews

[Leanna Solomin · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a $3 find at a bookstore, this book was definitely entertaining enough! I enjoyed the funny stories and legends of baseball of old. However, the writing is a little fragmented, with the author jumping from topic to topic somewhat unexpectedly. I think that’s mostly due to the vastness of the topic, but it made it a bit harder to read at points in the book.

Also for reference, this book was published in 1969, so the history is a little out of date😂

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

For its time, this was a pretty good book. But reading it today more than 50 years after publication, it has a few awkward moments and a few funny incorrect predictions. Overall, it's a nice breezy review of major moments in Major League Baseball history, with some interesting editorializing by a successful novelist and screenwriter. Did he break any new ground in this history? No. Did he entertain and educate? Yes.

One key thing to note is that scholarship about baseball has advanced tremendously since Douglass Wallop wrote his book. He relied on scores of baseball histories available at the time, as well as the leading baseball periodicals of various eras. That's all well and good, but work by many people (Bill James!!!!) since then has moved the needle considerably. Wallop seems to understand this, as he often gives a sideways wink at the wildly overstated prose written about baseball in the late 1800s and early parts of the 1900s. The stuff about baseball being The National Pastime that brings people outside to refresh their lungs, etc. There's truth to it -- and Wallop makes it clear that watching baseball was both a lovely relief from polluted cities for the working class and physical entertainment for boys and men in towns big and small -- but there's always been a ridiculous amount of hyperbole, too. And Wallop has fun with it.

But the weakness of this book is that the author is relying on those same overblown sources for his facts and his perspective. The great biographies of baseball stars written in the last three or four decades correct the record on many issues, and Wallop simply doesn't have access to that information. Wallop seems like the kind of writer who would have been content to stick with the hoary old stories and the lighter touch anyway. He writes in a couple of places it doesn't matter if the legend is true because it's a great story.

Here are a few examples of what the book does and what it lacks. Wallop references Babe Ruth's "bellyache" that cost him much of a season in his prime. This was likely venereal disease, which was hushed up at the time, but is basically an accepted fact now. His discussion of Ty Cobb as a Southerner with a chip on his shoulder who got into unfortunate scrapes with people. Well, it's a lot more serious than that, as Cobb's insane racism was both a product of his time and culture and a reflection of the worst of both. Modern sensitivities and scholarship have put that stuff in proper, vicious light. The author has a chapter about the Negro Leagues, which is great, but he writes that the teams didn't keep track of records or statistics; now we know, through painstaking work by researchers, approximately what those statistics were. In an example of how attitudes have changed, the author refers to Jackie Robinson as "articulate," and he means it as a sincere compliment (and it is a compliment). But today that term is seen as a backhanded insult to Black athletes, entertainers or politicians, as if it implies that it's remarkable if someone Black is articulate.

The other thing that jumps out are Wallop's assertions about baseball records. On several occasions he writes that a record "will never be broken" or "probably" will never be broken. And those records have been shattered. These include Cobb's hits and stolen bases marks, beaten by Pete Rose and Ricky Henderson, respectively. When Wallop wrote his book, Rose had played about 4 promising seasons, and Henderson was in diapers. So, obviously, this couldn't be on the author's radar. But he also doesn't seem to consider that Hank Aaron was poised to break the all-time home run record at the time he was writing, as Hammerin' Hank is barely mentioned in the book, even though it was starting to occur to people in 1968 that he could reach the hallowed mark of 714 homers. This was a blind spot for many fans at the time, but you'd like to think someone writing a baseball history might have considered it.

There's a lot that's not in this book because it happened after he wrote it, which is a reminder about how the game continues to build and grow. Nothing about the A's 1970s dynasty, the Big Red Machine, the Yankees of George Steinbrenner, the Braves run in the '80s-'90s. No Reggie, Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, Cal Ripken, Mike Trout. Not even Tom Seaver, who would turn in his greatest season just after the book was published, nor the Miracle Mets, who did their thing as this book hit the store shelves. Nothing about steroids or artificial turf or domed stadiums or teams in Canada. Nothing about the influx of players from Latin America (which had been underway for about a decade). Nothing about player free agency or million-dollar annual salaries. No rant about starting pitchers not finishing games because, in 1969, they still were throwing 9 innings. Truly, it was a different baseball world than the one we enjoy today.

One more thing to note. I like the speculations and editorializing in this book, which give it more depth and entertainment value than if it was a straight history. The last chapter, for example, ponders whether television is good or bad for baseball. Remember, the author is writing when one game per week was on TV, when the playoffs didn't exist (they had been announced at the time of his writing, but not yet launched for the 1969 season), and the World Series was still day games that kids listened to on transistor radios surreptitiously at school. There was no cable TV, no ESPN, etc. But Wallop asks whether TV is taking over the game and discouraging attendance. He blames it for the near-destruction of minor leagues in small cities: "why attend a D League game on the outskirts of town when you can watch major leaguers from your home?" He asks if televised baseball will become a studio sport in which fans are unnecessary and noise is piped in for effect.

Throughout the book, he observes that business has always been at the heart of professional baseball, and business has been the one thing that can screw up the beautiful game. And he's right on target about that.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read... consider it a Baseball Lore 101 type book. Seriously dated, in a quaint way, as it was written in 1968.