1930: The Story of a Baseball Season When Hitters Reigned Supreme

by Lew Freedman

The 1930 Major League baseball season was both marvelous and horrendous, great for hitters, embarrassing for pitchers. In totality it was just this side of insane as an outlier among all seasons.Major League Baseball began with the founding of the National League in 1876. In the 145 seasons since then, one season stands out as unique for the astounding nature of 1930.A flipside of 1968’s “Year of the Pitcher,” when the great St. Louis Cardinals Bob Gibson compiled a 1.12 earned run average and Detroit Tigers Denny McLain won 31 games, the 1930 season was when the batters reigned supreme. During this incredible season, more than one hundred players batted .300, the entire National League averaged .300, ten players hit 30 or more home runs, and some of the greatest individual performances established all-time records. From New York Giants Bill Terry’s .401 average—the last National Leaguer to hit over .400—to the NL-record 56 home runs and major league–record 192 runs batted in by Chicago Cubs Hack Wilson, the 1930 season is a wild, sometimes unbelievable, often wacky baseball story.Breaking down the anomaly of the season and how each team fared, veteran journalist Lew Freeman tells the story of a one-off year unlike any other. While the greats stayed great, and though some pitchers did hold their own—with seven winning 20 or more games, including 28 by Philadelphia Athletics’ Lefty Grove and 25 by Cleveland Indians’ Wes Ferrell—Freedman shares anecdotes about those players that excelled in 1930, and only 1930. More than ninety years later, 1930 offers insight into a season that still stands the test of time for batting excellence.

Genres: Baseball

312 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 31, 2021

Reviews

[Zach Koenig · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rarely do I find a baseball history book that disagrees with me. I also don't enjoy giving any book a 1-star rating (because I know how much effort goes into each and every one of them). But I found "1930" to be so lacking in overall narrative or heart that I couldn't justify any higher ranking.

Ostensibly, "1930" tells the story of that titular MLB campaign, in which offensive numbers were off the charts. Babe Ruth was still swatting them out of ballparks at an incredible clip, while other mashers like Jimmie Foxx & Hack Wilson were putting together unreal career seasons. As such, one would expect this book to go over why the offensive environment was so high and interweave that with the stories of the players who comprised it.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead, "1930" is structured like this: a chapter on each 1930 Major League team in which author Lew Freedman gives a rundown of their roster, including notable batters (as befitting the overall theme) and pitchers who may have bucked the trend to remain effective. There is absolutely no narrative here and no attempt to tie the events of the '30 season in with anything past/present/future. Maybe the worst offense? I'd say that 30-40% (at most) of the statistics/info in the book are actually from 1930. The rest is biographical snippets that could just as easily be gleaned from picking up a copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia or trolling through Baseball-Reference online.

Purely as a aggregation of 1930 names and statistics, "1930" is--fine, I guess. But if you are looking for a tome with absolutely any over-arching narrative or soul to it, I would suggest looking elsewhere. I quickly skimmed through this one because of how rote I found it.

[Tom Gase · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was really excited for this book, but kind of a let down just because it's organized kind of poorly in my opinion. A lot of stuff repeated, and I'm at times wondering what year is being discussed. I would have done this book in chronological order from April to October, but the author starts with a few of the top performances of 1930 with Hack Wilson, Bill Terry, Babe Ruth, etc and then goes onto teams. He has a 10-page chapter for each team, which at first I thought was a cool idea. But then with each team he doesn't focus on the 1930 season but instead talks about that team from around 1903 to 1940 and as a reader you kind of feel confused. The actual pennant races and World Series aren't discussed until the last 15 pages of the book and then feel very rushed. I wanted to know more about that years World Series, but it's about four pages, and not in full detail. A lot of well-researched information, but the execution came up a little flat. Too bad, I enjoyed his book on Spahn.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ironically, this book is about the greatest offensive season in baseball. Unfortunately, Freedman whiffs. I have only given one other book fewer than three stars, and most get 4-5. This could have been such an interesting book. Instead, it was more offensive than about offense. I expected stories about various high scoring games, possibly including great comebacks, huge innings, awful individual pitching lines, and the greatest of the daily hitting results. Instead, nothing. The book consisted of brief vignettes of most players on each roster, but most of it had very little to do with 1930. I understand the author has written many books, but this would make me hesitate to read others.

[Kevin Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like several other reviewers, I really wanted to read this and really wanted to like it. Maybe “Crazy ‘08” and “Summer of ‘49” set a bar for seasonal histories that’s too high to get over. This one certainly didn’t get there. It took some work to assemble all those names and numbers - then it all just got thrown into a pile. And how does the Black Sox scandal rate six pages in a work about 1930? Unorganized and unfocused.

[Jeff Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 maybe 4 depending on the interest and knowledge of the topic. I was aware of some specific statistics i.e. Bill Terry's 400 batting average, Hack Wilson's HR and RBI records. I knew nothing of the specific stats by teams nor how bad the pitching was overall. Credit for the offense was given to the makers of the baseball which was mentioned briefly early in the book and briefly in final chapter.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the 1930 season. Each of the 16 teams has a chapter providing a rundown of key hitters and pitchers including a few like Showboat Fisher who peaked in the Year of the Hitter and quickly faded. There are a couple factual errors: Babe Herman isn’t in the Hall of Fame and Gabby Hartnett didn’t play his whole career for the Cubs. An overall good effort from a prolific author.

[Dick Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has a good concept - story of 1930, when the hitters really did run wild - but not well executed. A number of statistics are repeated multiple times, the editing could be much better, etc. I think if the book was more tightly focused on a limited number of players, it would have made for better reading.

[Jim Blessing · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a lifelong baseball fan, this was a great book about this year of the batters.