September Streak: The 1935 Chicago Cubs Chase the Pennant

by Doug Feldmann

With the recent success of the Gas House Gang as backdrop, the National League prepared for the 1935 season. The United States was still in the Great Depression, but executives in baseball predicted a financial comeback during the year, and Chicago's "windy" politicians demanded a pennant-contending ballclub. Yes, there was a time when the Cubs were expected to win. This book chronicles the Cubs' 1935 season and the many on- and off-field events that impacted the game for years to come: Fans who had once turned to baseball for heroes and men of character now laughed at players' uncouth antics and fun-loving carousing reported in the morning newspapers; Babe Ruth debuted in the National League with the Boston Braves, and retired soon after; the first major league night game was played in Cincinnati; the chewing gum king Phil Wrigley was the first to broadcast all of his team's games on the radio; and the Cubs won 21 games in a row in September to take the pennant--the last Cubs team to win 100 games in a season.

247 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Doug Feldmann is an American author of thirteen books, focusing mainly upon baseball history and the sport's sociological impact on urban and small-town America. His work has been recognized in multiple-time nominations for the Casey Award and the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research. He is a professor in the College of Education at Northern Kentucky University and a former baseball scout for the Cincinnati Reds, Seattle Mariners, and San Diego Padres. He completed his Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies at Indiana University (1999), his master's degree in Secondary Education at Rockford University (1995), and his bachelor's degree in English and History at Northern Illinois University (1992), where he was an outfielder on the baseball team and a walk-on punter on the football team.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is hard to write a compelling chronicle of a team’s season from spring training to the World Series. Based on his other books, Feldmann appears to enjoy writing these types of chronicles, but the result here is not very interesting. Much of the book reads as a summary of the daily newspaper recaps from the season, even down to the style of 1930s sportswriting.

Feldmann does try to liven up the “and then Hartnett hit a homer to left to extend the lead” type narrative with summaries of worldwide events happening outside of baseball. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it seems out of place. There’s often no break in the text between the baseball and world news narratives.

There is evidence of the need for better editing and proofreading. For instance, the book tells us that Babe Ruth hit his 724th home run on opening day 1935. Given that his 714 career homers is one of the most famous numbers in baseball history, and the opening day homer was his 709th, I wondered as I read how much else was wrong.

It is also strange to read a modern baseball book (albeit 2003) that judges hitters’ performance almost entirely on batting average and pitchers’ performance almost entirely on wins, as if there are not statistics that tell us so much more.