Product Description
In the 1890s, the legendary Baltimore Orioles of the National League (sic) under the tutelage of manager Ned Hanlon, perfected a style of play known as “scientific baseball, ” featuring such innovations as the sacrifice bunt, the hit-and-run, the squeeze play, and the infamous Baltimore chop. Its best hitter, Wee Willie Keeler, had the motto “keep your eye clear and hit ‘em where they ain’t” — which he did. He and his colorful teammates, fierce third-baseman John McGraw, avuncular catcher Wibert Robinson, and heartthrob center fielder Joe Kelly, won three straight pennants from 1894 to 1896. But the Orioles were swept up and ultimately destroyed in a business intrigue involving the political machines of three large cities and collusion with the ambitious men who ran the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. Burt Solomon narrates the rise and fall of this colorful franchise as a cautionary tale of greed and overreaching that speaks volumes as well about the enterprise of baseball a century later.Amazon.com Review
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” is one of those perfect axioms that begs the question, When is baseball gonna finally remember and get it right? Subtitled “The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball,” Solomon’s splendidly energetic examination of one of the sport’s most powerful and storied franchises stands as a fascinating–and cautionary–study of how a team, regardless of quality, can simply implode. And what a team the Orioles of the 1890s was: manager Ned Hanlon and stars Wee Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Hugh Jennings, Wilbert Robinson, Dan Brouthers, Iron Man McGinnity, and Joe Kelley all deserve their plaques in Cooperstown. As a unit, they created “scientific baseball,” redefining the way the game was played and dominating the National League. Yet, by 1903, to Baltimore’s horror and confusion, there were no more Orioles. A series of self-destructive choices successfully conspired to export their best players to Brooklyn and remove the franchise–now a member of the American League and playing in New York as the Highlanders–from the Major League standings for nearly half a century.
A fine reporter and writer, Solomon does a remarkable job of bringing the past into the present, exploring how little has changed in terms of baseball business and organizational stupidity through the years. With its marvelous cast of real–and fully realized–characters, Where They Ain’t reads as much like a novel as it does like history, and though we know how it ends, it remains an important story worth telling, learning from, and certainly remembering. –Jeff Silverman
Price: $11.31
Rating: 4.5 (16 reviews)
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My favorite era in baseball is the Deadball
Era, with the years from 1903-1919, but another wild time was the 1890s, highlighted by the amazing Baltimore Orioles. There was only one league then: the National League.
This account of that period, the Orioles and the team’s best hitter, “Wee Willie” Keeler, is a good read for all fans who love baseball history. Keeler was not just a fantastic hitter but a really interesting man. Of course, so was half the team led by the even-more-famous third baseman-later-turned-manager John McGraw.
Author Burt Solomon did his homework. The Orioles and all their ups and downs are detailed both on and off the ballfield. The business end of baseball was brutal back then (not that it’s ever been admirable). Sometimes the book gets bogged down with all the financial dealings but overall it’s a good read. It makes you shake your in amazement and frustration how stupid baseball was run and how bad a shake the city of Baltimore and its team got. In other words, similar to the stupidity of today’s baseball “leadership” where they start World Series games at 10 o’clock at night, as we just witnessed.
All the stories about the “cranks” along with the crazy bloodthirsty Orioles were fun. I’m telling you: baseball fans who ignore the early days of the sport are missing out on the some of the greatest sports stories of all time. You almost can’t go wrong reading about anything that happened on the diamond between 1890 and 1920.
“Where They Ain’t” is a famous baseball quote from Keeler, who was asked the secret to this hitting. “Just hit `em where they (the fielders) ain’t,” he replied. Sounds good to me.
Rating: 4 / 5
Where They Ain’t: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles.
After avoiding 19th century baseball like the plague, I’m suddenly highly intrigued by it and I really enjoyed this book. It starts up in the early ‘Nineties after the collapse of the Players’ League in 1890 and the American Association (the old “Beer and Whiskey” League) in 1892. The National League incorporated the four strongest of the American Association teams and became a 12 team league.
The author describes how Ned Hanlon took over the old Baltimore franchise and moved it from the defunct American Association into the National League. Hanlon was sort of the Billy Bean of his day: due to severe financial constraints, he was always looking for “diamonds in the ruff.” He was also a great evaluator of talent. All he did was put together a team composed of Hall of Famers Wee Willie Keeler, Dan Brouthers, John McGraw, Joe Kelley, Hugie Jennings, Wilbert Robinson, plus Steve Brodie and Sadie McMahon. Within two years, he created a dynasty in Baltimore, arguably one of the best teams of all times, winning pennants in ‘94, ‘95, and ‘96.
After the Baltimore era, the author then covers the period of Syndicate baseball, where one group of baseball magnates controlled more than one team, as the financially strapped Orioles were consolidated with the Brooklyn franchise – and another powerhouse was created. Then he shows how the American League formed out of the mess left by Syndicate baseball and Ban Johnson hoped to form a more “respectful” League, free of much of the “riff-raff,” profanity, and umpire baiting that characterized the National League. Needless to say, when McGraw was brought in to start up a new American League Baltimore Orioles team in 1902, he immediately clashed with Johnson and was soon secretly negotiating a return to the National League with a takeover of the Giants.
Throughout the book, the author goes into great detail about the personalities of the covered era and all the ongoing conflicts and politics among players, owners, and franchises. Profits, greed, and deceit were the orders of the day in the cutthroat, “survival of the fittest” world of Major League Baseball as the 19th century came to an end. Plus the author really paints a vivid picture of the “times” and how it affected baseball, including the Panic of ‘93 and the Spanish-American War. One criticism is that occasionally he goes into too much detail, covering items of little significance that one could never hope to remember. But all in all, it’s a great book, one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read.
If you love baseball history but have been avoiding 19th century baseball – as I have – and want to start getting into it, this is the book for you.
Rating: 4 / 5
Although I have always enjoyed baseball history, I have never had much interest in baseball before the first World Series in 1903. I thought that since early baseball was so unlike the “modern” game it was as dry as dust. This book has corrected that erroneous opinion. Mr. Solomon shows the continuity of the game since the early days, yet refers to significant changes in the rules that led to the way the game has, essentially, been played over the past 100 years. The author also does an excellent job of placing the events of his story within the context of the social and economic conditions of the day. However, the most obvious parallel is that the business aspects of major league baseball have changed very little over the years. The more things change, the more they remain the same! This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5
“Where They Ain’t” manages at once to be a fascinating book about baseball, an acute historical account of a fascinating era, and a remarkably apt parable for our own times. A must read for baseball fans, but also a serious and thought-provoking volume for any serious reader.
Rating: 5 / 5
Being an Oriole fan for many years, I was attracted to this book by it’s title, but I got much more than I expected. This book is chock full of baseball history regarding the early years of what is now considered “modern baseball”. Stories about the early Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, Wee Willie Keeler, and John McGraw make this a must read for any true baseball fan.
Rating: 5 / 5