Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King (review)

The story behind Lowell L. Blaisdell's Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King immediately informs the reader why this is such a fun book to read. This is, of course, assuming the reader has spent the prerequisite lifetime devoted to the love of baseball and has mastered the (dying) art of "watching" the box scores. Blaisdell explains, "By the age of eleven, I had taken up box score perusal as a pastime. July 3, 1933, being a Monday, I looked with alacrity at the box scores of the Sunday Games. One absolutely astonished me. In the opener of a Polo Grounds double-header, the New York Giants had outlasted the St. Louis Cardinals in eighteen innings. Astonishment turned to disbelief when the box score showed the Giants had used a single pitcher, Carl Hubbell. How, I asked myself could a team ask its hurler to last out the equivalent of two regular-length games?" (1). Blaisdell is a life-long Cubs fan, but that eighteen-inning game also made him a life-long fan of Carl Hubbell. Many baseball fans have a moment like that. Kerry Wood striking out twenty Houston Astros was mine. One can empathize with the sense of advocacy sometimes found in Blaisdell's tone (though it is hardly necessary in Hubbell's case). He was so affected by Hubbell's eighteen-inning gem, in fact, that he devotes the entire (albeit short) fourth chapter to the effort.

Blaisdell's book is broken up into sixteen relatively short chapters spanning Hubbell's career in more or less chronological fashion, though the chapters focus on events or themes more so than neatly demarcated time periods. The first chapter, titled "Varieties of Farming," deals with Hubbell's rise through the minor leagues and Detroit's embarrassing failure to allow Hubbell to use his screwball. Without the screwball, they did not recognize what they had in the future Hall of Famer and so sent him to the Giants for $50,000. From there, the author details Hubbell's development under John McGraw, his ascension to becoming the Giants ace, and various highlights throughout his career before closing with Hubbell's time as the Giants farm director and his retirement years.

Blaisdell's narrative is limited, as he himself admits, by a lack of primary sources (autobiography, interviews, letters, etc.) and the consequent need to depend on newspapers and box scores. Despite hopes of outdoing the journalists of Hubbell's time by gathering "more about Hubbell than they had," Blaisdell "found only what the press had reported at the time in bits and pieces" (3). At times, particularly in sections recounting games played, the narrative comes across like Steve Stone doing color commentary for a box score. The challenge of bringing past baseball games to life from box scores and statistics is one every historian of the game faces. The narrative is somewhat hard to follow at points because of the multiple names that refer to ball clubs. In the same sentence, the Cubs become the Bruins; in another, the Tigers become the Bengals; and the Giants suddenly become "the travelers" for a paragraph or two.

On the other hand, one of the real strengths of this effort lies in the author's ability to present legendary stories with the enthusiasm of a fourteen-year-old kid. The eighteen-inning gem mentioned at the beginning of this review is contextually seated four days prior to the first All-Star game, which was to be held in Comiskey Park on July 6, 1933 (56). In the following year's All-Star game, Hubbell strikes out five Hall of Famers consecutively: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin (95). And less than half a year later, we see the Babe starting in left field on opening day for the Boston Braves. After striking out against Hubbell in that All-Star game, and after being released in the offseason after...