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TLDR: Impressive research and information on the context on how baseball began in the United States, but difficult to follow from a narrative perspective at times.
I read this book to do research on my documentary about the formation of the Chicago Cubs, or rather when they started the Chicago Base Ball Club, aka the Chicago White Stockings in 1869.
I did have some prior research on the club’s formation and the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, but needed prior contextual information about early baseball, how it started, and how the game evolved up to the point to where the White Stockings started off. Based off what I needed, this book really delivered in providing the early history of the formation of baseball. The information provided for the first 150~ pages is truly well researched and provides the important context needed to truly grasp how baseball developed in that crucial period.
A good portion of the book’s primary sources was the Clipper and Chadwick’s Scrapbooks, both publications that covered baseball extensively, and perhaps better than anyone else at the time. These sources provided the crucial details in making the book valuable, as there are very limited digital archives for these publications, and those sources unveiled a truly interesting narrative of America searching for its cultural identity after the brutality of the Civil War. For that, I very much value the book and what I learned from reading it.
I did have some issues getting through the book.
The first one was the sources somewhat limited the overall narrative especially towards the end of the book. According to the book, by 1869 and 1870, the juggernauts of baseball were largely straying away from New York, where the main Clipper publication and Chadwick Sports operated out of. There was solid and extensive coverage on the Red Stockings and the Cincinnati newspapers, but much of the info felt too focused on the opinion of the Clipper, or what Henry Chadwick and his writers felt about any given situation in the story.
I also felt the flow of the story felt a bit too “stop and go”, which made it difficult to get thru the chapters and take notes on. For example, the “Gold Ball” chapters tried covering the narrative of an entire seasons, which isn’t easy. You’d read about one team, then hop to the next team, but then there needed to be context about a certain player or ownership, and then they had to do a time jump to back up a bit and explain why that guy is important, and then back to the original topic, and then this team ended up losing or winning and that was that. I found myself lost at times trying to understand what had actually happened, almost as if the arrangement of the info presented could’ve been rewritten for a clearer understanding. I do acknowledge that trying to provide the info in a straightforward way is difficult when the context of the time period matters a lot. Ultimately this is my biggest critique because it made it difficult to read more than 10-13 pages every time I picked it up, and took me awhile to complete notes.
My last point of feedback is the chapters relating to content of the Chicago White Stockings at the end of the book. The author dedicates the right amount of time towards covering the club and its first season in 1870, however the sources used to cover the conclusion of the 1870 Mutuals/WS dispute felt strongly biased against Chicago. Many of my primary sources covered Chicago’s situation and commented that there were suspicious activity afoot, but there was also a lot of similar “foul play” incident other clubs dealt with. I’m not sure if that’s a critique towards the sources Ryczek used, or his interpretation of what he thought about the club. The book does comment that the dispute at the end of the 1870 season was a general mess, but it somewhat dismisses a lot of Chicago’s rationale, and generally depicts the White Stockings in a more negative light than the other clubs, in a time where many clubs were engaging in degenerate and corrupt manner. Almost felt like a New York City bias towards Chicago that’s very much still present today.
I read this book to do research on my documentary about the formation of the Chicago Cubs, or rather when they started the Chicago Base Ball Club, aka the Chicago White Stockings in 1869.
I did have some prior research on the club’s formation and the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, but needed prior contextual information about early baseball, how it started, and how the game evolved up to the point to where the White Stockings started off. Based off what I needed, this book really delivered in providing the early history of the formation of baseball. The information provided for the first 150~ pages is truly well researched and provides the important context needed to truly grasp how baseball developed in that crucial period.
A good portion of the book’s primary sources was the Clipper and Chadwick’s Scrapbooks, both publications that covered baseball extensively, and perhaps better than anyone else at the time. These sources provided the crucial details in making the book valuable, as there are very limited digital archives for these publications, and those sources unveiled a truly interesting narrative of America searching for its cultural identity after the brutality of the Civil War. For that, I very much value the book and what I learned from reading it.
I did have some issues getting through the book.
The first one was the sources somewhat limited the overall narrative especially towards the end of the book. According to the book, by 1869 and 1870, the juggernauts of baseball were largely straying away from New York, where the main Clipper publication and Chadwick Sports operated out of. There was solid and extensive coverage on the Red Stockings and the Cincinnati newspapers, but much of the info felt too focused on the opinion of the Clipper, or what Henry Chadwick and his writers felt about any given situation in the story.
I also felt the flow of the story felt a bit too “stop and go”, which made it difficult to get thru the chapters and take notes on. For example, the “Gold Ball” chapters tried covering the narrative of an entire seasons, which isn’t easy. You’d read about one team, then hop to the next team, but then there needed to be context about a certain player or ownership, and then they had to do a time jump to back up a bit and explain why that guy is important, and then back to the original topic, and then this team ended up losing or winning and that was that. I found myself lost at times trying to understand what had actually happened, almost as if the arrangement of the info presented could’ve been rewritten for a clearer understanding. I do acknowledge that trying to provide the info in a straightforward way is difficult when the context of the time period matters a lot. Ultimately this is my biggest critique because it made it difficult to read more than 10-13 pages every time I picked it up, and took me awhile to complete notes.
My last point of feedback is the chapters relating to content of the Chicago White Stockings at the end of the book. The author dedicates the right amount of time towards covering the club and its first season in 1870, however the sources used to cover the conclusion of the 1870 Mutuals/WS dispute felt strongly biased against Chicago. Many of my primary sources covered Chicago’s situation and commented that there were suspicious activity afoot, but there was also a lot of similar “foul play” incident other clubs dealt with. I’m not sure if that’s a critique towards the sources Ryczek used, or his interpretation of what he thought about the club. The book does comment that the dispute at the end of the 1870 season was a general mess, but it somewhat dismisses a lot of Chicago’s rationale, and generally depicts the White Stockings in a more negative light than the other clubs, in a time where many clubs were engaging in degenerate and corrupt manner. Almost felt like a New York City bias towards Chicago that’s very much still present today.