The Best They Could Be: How the Cleveland Indians Became the Kings of Baseball, 1916–1920 by Scott H. Longert (review)

The Cleveland Indians have won two World Series in 113 years. The first, in 1920, was remarkable for several events occurring that season, some unique in good ways, one unique in an especially bad way. Consequently, that season has inspired a number of books; each has adopted a different approach to telling the story of that season and its compelling cast of team members. For example, Mike Sowell’s The Pitch That Killed presented Cleveland’s season in tight focus, with particularly painful and rousingly redemptive detail. Bill Felber’s Under Pallor, Under Shadow broadened the perspective to include the surrounding, contemporaneous, seminal changes taking place in baseball and society in 1920. Scott Longert’s The Best They Could Be returns the focus to the Indians but with a longer chronological perspective, as he follows their five-year rise from mediocrity and desperation to preeminence and fulfillment.

That half decade has recurred, in many different forms, in Cleveland as well as in other cities. The owner of the 1915 Indians must seem familiar to many fans today when he is described as having “too many interests outside of baseball” (3), making him “underfunded and overextended” (4). Many current fans, especially in Cleveland, can identify with having an owner who reduces payroll by releasing—or trading with little return—the team’s best players (Nap Lajoie and Joe Jackson, respectively).

On the other hand, the subsequent owner of the Indians will also seem familiar. Jim Dunn went from messenger boy at a bank to successful, self-made contractor and developer, using his accumulated capital to buy the Indians in 1916 and to begin to build a pennant-winning team. In many ways, this book is his story. He will win over fans now as he did in 1916, when he explained, “I made up my mind to buy the Cleveland club … because I believed Cleveland was a grand baseball town” (27). He will evoke a fond longing among today’s fans when they read of his decision to atone for the sins of his predecessor by adding Tris Speaker, the one player who could make up for losing Joe Jackson. Readers will note that Speaker’s joining the team was also significant because, then as now, teams tried to be solid up the middle, with “a corking good catcher, a star at either short or second, and one in center field” (34). Dunn also signed players who would not necessarily have a high batting average or hit for power but who would “harass the pitcher, wear down his strength, and exhaust his patience” (45) by working the count and drawing walks. This, too, will resonate with modern fans (and moneyball acolytes). Dunn will earn renewed respect from a new generation of fans when they read how an owner preferred to forgo higher revenues during a crucial series against the Yankees—then as now a big draw—in order to honor his promise to give sixteen thousand children a free ticket to these games. Reversing a decision by his own front office not to honor those free passes, Dunn said, “When I gave those tickets to the school children there were no strings attached to the gifts” (166). And he will embody, to modern fans, that longed-for but seemingly chimerical owner: a hands-on and benevolent leader who refers to team members as “my boys” (185).

From a hundred years ago to today, fan reactions have continued to demonstrate how an individual owner, by connecting with a team’s fans, contributes significantly to the team’s success. Longert thus recounts Cleveland’s climb to the throne of “the kings of baseball” by describing the team’s fans. These were the fans who, inspired by Dunn’s buoyancy, snatched up tickets before the 1917 season and made tickets to the home opener scarce—so much...