Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World Series (review)

Several books have recently been published celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first World Series played between the National League and the then upstart American League. Louis P. Masur, a professor of history at City College of New York, has authored one such book, an excellent review of this first World Series played between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans. Masur's fine book provides considerable detail not only on the ball games making up the Series but also on the cultural implications of the Series in the world of baseball as well as in American society. He asserts that the development of the World Series helped immensely in cementing baseball's role as America's national pastime.

The book is made up of individual chapters on the 8 games played in the World Series (it was a best-of-9 series). Interspersed between these are chapters that serve as brief histories of the development of the American League; the politics and maneuverings of the owners and players, which eventually resulted in a peace agreement between the leagues; the tenuous relationship that threatened the organization of the World Series, and overviews of both the Pirates' and the Americans' 1903 seasons. Masur provides considerable detail on the careers and personalities of the players, not only for the future Hall of Famers involved in the series—Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Jimmy Collins, and Fred Clarke—but also on most of the other players involved, including Deacon Phillippe, Tommy Leach, Patsy Dougherty, and Bill Dineen. The team owners, Pittsburgh's Barney Dreyfuss and Boston's Henry Killilea, are also spotlighted, and appropriately so, as they are the real drivers behind the organization of the World Series. Likewise, Masur documents the actions and [Begin Page 135] opinions of the sportswriters and fans who attended and documented the games, especially the Royal Rooters and their leader, Mike McGreevey, whose dedication to the Boston nine could easily be described as fanatical.

The book provides detailed action for each of the games, which is drawn from the many Boston and Pittsburgh newspapers covering the Series. Masur deftly uses, and avoids overusing, quotes from these newspaper descriptions along with his own prose to provide color in the game descriptions. The ballparks, Pittsburgh's Exposition Park and Boston's Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds, are vividly depicted. Included in these descriptions are the effects of the overflow crowds, who were cordoned into a roped-off area behind the outfield. These fans thus reduced the size of the outfield, resulting in a multitude of ground rule triples throughout the series. Well documented also is the ubiquitous gambling associated with the Series. Gamblers, fans, and especially players wagered large sums of money on the results of each game and on the Series as a whole. The gambling brought out a fair amount of cynicism in many who believed that the Series would go the full 9 games if only to allow for additional wagering on the part of the players. The economic aspect of the Series, including not only the gambling but also the disbursement of funds between the players and owners, is quite interesting.

The book also includes a fair amount of documentation, including box scores for each of the games and composite World Series statistics for the players. Although the book does not feature annotation, Masur does provide an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, including a list of many newspapers and contemporaneous articles, as well as a detailed index. Interspersed effectively throughout the text are a number of pictures of the players, ballparks, and fans, including some wonderful pictures taken from the McGreevey Collection housed at the Boston Public Library.

This book is recommended not only for anyone interested in the first World Series but also for those interested in a brief yet complete description of the tumultuous times when what we now call Major League baseball was formed. Overall, Masur has written a thoroughly detailed and simply enjoyable account of these...