In the mid-1920s, America was in the throes of exuberant excess and clashing social change. It was the era of Prohibition and speakeasies; the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan; popular evangelists, including ex-ballplayer Billy Sunday; a fascination with dangerous stunts like pole-sitting and wing-walking; incredible personal feats and new personalities such as Charles Lindbergh, Gertrude Ederle, and Mae West; and the advancement of innovative forms of entertainment-jazz, motion pictures, the radio. It was the Golden Age of Sports. But it was also a decade of corruption amid the ominous signs of economic collapse. In 1926 baseball stars of an earlier era still played major roles in the game: Veteran pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander was the hero of the 1926 World Series; Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker faced explosive allegations of game-fixing; Babe Ruth's mysterious illness and dismal 1925 season convinced many observers that Ruth was finished-over the hill. Meanwhile, new stars like Tony Lazzeri and Lou Gehrig had arrived on the scene, and the Negro Leagues were at the height of their popularity and success with Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants winning the Colored World Series of 1926. One of America's most ardent fans cheered from the White House-not the taciturn president, Calvin Coolidge, but his vibrant and well-liked wife, Grace. Focusing on the Cardinals and Yankees and their dramatic seven-game battle in the 1926 World Series, Baseball in the Roaring Twenties tells the story of key players such as Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby, the Negro Leagues season, and how baseball and the inextricably linked aspects of American life-Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the rise of sports gambling-converged that year.
Thomas Wolf is the author of The Called Shot: Babe Ruth, the Chicago Cubs, and the Unforgettable Major League Baseball Season of 1932 (Nebraska, 2020), finalist for the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research, and coauthor, with Patricia Bryan, of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America's Heartland.
List of Illustrations List of Tables Author's Note Acknowledgments Introduction: The Roaring Twenties Part 1. The Teams 1. A Dynasty Is Born 2. Miller Huggins 3. The Cardinals and Rogers Hornsby 4. Spring Training in Terrell Woods 5. Spring Training in St. Petersburg Part 2. The Season 6. Opening Days 7. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb 8. Early Season Blues for the Redbirds 9. Grover Cleveland Alexander 10. Away from the Ballpark 11. Dutch Leonard Has a Story to Tell 12. Yankee Pitchers and Tony Lazzeri 13. Rube Foster and Black Baseball 14. Sesquicentennial Games 15. Judge Landis Takes Over 16. The Golden Age of Sports 17. Final Days Part 3. The Postseason 18. World Series Games One and Two 19. World Series Games Three, Four, and Five 20. World Series Games Six and Seven 21. The Colored World Series of 1926 22. Judge Landis Steps Up to the Plate Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
"Readers who loved Thomas Wolf's The Called Shot are in for another treat. Wolf's Baseball in the Roaring Twenties sets a rich historical and cultural backdrop for his masterful retelling of the dramatic 1926 World Series between Babe Ruth's New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals of Rogers Hornsby and Pete Alexander, looking also at Rube Foster and the Negro World Series, and the allegations of game-fixing involving Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker."-Tim Wiles, former director of research for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum "Thomas Wolf explores both the national pastime and America itself. Everyone is here, from fading diamond star Grover 'Ol' Pete' Alexander to hot rookie Tony 'Poosh 'Em Up' Lazzeri, plus the explorers, gangsters, evangelists, and politicians of the day. Wolf paints a broad, fascinating landscape with skill and grace."-Jim Leeke, author of Big Loosh: The Unruly Life of Umpire Ron Luciano "Tom Wolf is Frederick Lewis Allen incarnate. What Allen's Only Yesterday was to the 1920s in its immediate aftermath, Wolf's Baseball in the Roaring Twenties is to that most fascinating decade a century later. More than just a baseball book, Wolf's latest uses the 1926 season as a prism through which to interrogate many aspects of the era's legacy, both near and far from the diamond."-Clayton Trutor, author of Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta-and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports "Tom Wolf's book is an engaging story about baseball in the heart of the Roaring Twenties, situating the 1926 season in the context of the era and telling of the stunning comeback of the Yankees after their collapse in 1925 and the surprising emergence of the Cardinals to win their first-ever World Series title."-Steve Steinberg, coauthor of Mike Donlin: A Rough and Rowdy Life from New York Baseball Idol to Stage and Screen
