Fifty-nine in '84

"First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Steven Ambrose wrote. . . . Achorn's description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive." --Boston Globe

"A beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time." -- Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian

In 1884 Providence Grays pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine games--more than anyone in major-league history ever had before, or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series.

Fifty-nine in '84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil War--a brutal, bloody sport played barehanded, the profession of uneducated, hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win.

Wonderfully entertaining, Fifty-nine in '84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating, little-known era of the national pastime.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 03/01/2011
ISBN: 9780061825873
Pages: 400
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.41w x 1.08d