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  • "The Greatest Game Ever Played in Dixie": The Nashville Vols, Their 1908 Season, and the Championship Game
  • Christopher M. Keshock
John A. Simpson . "The Greatest Game Ever Played in Dixie": The Nashville Vols, Their 1908 Season, and the Championship Game. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. 282 pp. Paper, $29.95.

For a baseball bugs (fans) interested in the sport's emergence in Dixie, John A. Simpson's monograph offers a readable starting point. In describing the high minor league teams of the South at the turn of the twentieth century, including their colorful owners, hard-nosed managers, and combative players, the author provides a glimpse of the false starts and gradual successes that eventually led to the enthusiastic acceptance of professional baseball. In this brief work, Simpson skillfully describes the figures and events of the 1908 baseball season in the Southern Association.

Fans today are bombarded by sportswriters and talking heads touting the "Greatest Football Game Ever Played" or the "Fight of the Century," so superlatives have lost much of their impact. Simpson points out that the use of superlatives in the sports arena goes back over a century to the descriptions [End Page 150] of the 1908 Nashville Vols as taking part in "The Greatest Game Ever Played in Dixie," the assessment of none other than Grantland Rice, destined to become one of the greatest sportswriters in American history. In a July account from that year, Rice warmed up to the task of extolling the exploits of the hometown team by writing, "It was the greatest game of baseball that had ever been witnessed" (112).

In chronicling the fortunes of the Vols in their chase for the Southern Association pennant, the author's superb research efforts provide a nostalgic look at organized baseball in the South during the "dead ball or scientific baseball era." This featured the "one run at a time" philosophy that included offensive speed on the field coupled with defensive quickness (10). Managers sought to generate runs through sacrifice bunts, hit-and-run strategies, delayed steals, double steals, and aggressive base running. As today's game stresses the three-run home run and extra-base hits, many aspects of scientific baseball take on secondary roles or merit the pejorative term of "small ball." However, for the baseball crazy fans of Nashville circa 1908, scientific baseball was alive and well and deeply appreciated by thousands of kranks (fans). This fervor is apparent in the game accounts of the three Nashville papers so skillfully summarized by Simpson one hundred years later.

What would a history of a season be without descriptions of the personalities of the manager and players as they made their way through the pressure-packed season? In this, the author's succinct assessments would get a sports psychologist's seal of approval. Manager "Strawberry Bill" Bernhard possessed a strong character, was resolute, and admired by his players. His colorful players included the popular outfielder Doc Wiseman; speedy Harry (Deerfoot) Bay; team captain Pryor McElveen, also known as "Humpy"; and Gentleman Jake Daubert, a first baseman who later had an outstanding major league career primarily with the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a team rescued from mediocrity, the 1908 Vols fought hard against Southern Association opponents, and often among themselves, en route to making Nashville sports history. No small task given their pre-season descriptions as selfish, given to dissention, and having disruptive attitudes. These negative traits were all swept aside in the final game of the season when a glorious league championship was realized.

An ancillary benefit of this book allows the reader to trace the apotheosis of Grantland Rice as reflected in his slang, baseball witticisms, and poetic reflections on the games of the Vols as they marched to a championship. Early in his career, the multi-talented Rice served as the Vanderbilt baseball coach, began an illustrious career as a sportswriter, and served as the sports editor of the Tennessean. His job description included making contributions [End Page 151] to the editorial page and supplying poems "to add flavor to the news and sports stories" (112). In culling Rice's observations from the print media of that day, Simpson affords the reader an excellent...

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