Michael Shapiro’s Bottom of the Ninth was released last week by Times Books/Henry Holt, and I barely put it down between the time I got my copy in the mail and the time I finished it.
Some books you know are going to be terrific before you even crack open the spine, given the subject and the author.
A little-remembered chapter of our national pastime, chronicling the fallout from the departure of the Dodgers and Giants for California after the 1957 season.
I was always curious about the story of the Continental League, which Buffalo tried to use to gain admission to major league baseball about 50 years ago. This answered my questions nicely. Fine job
Interesting book released today from Michael Shapiro, a baseball historian who has written about, among other things, the Brooklyn Dodgers in the past. “Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself” is about Rickey’s vision for how to “save” baseball, largely through the creation of a third major league, the Continental League.
Did football become the national pastime because baseball got greedy?
Football may not have been as popular today had baseball followed the lead of legendary executive Branch Rickey and created a third major league.
Allan Barra writes: Shapiro (author of “The Last Good Season,” about the old Brooklyn Dodgers) is a terrific writer. His accounts of Branch Rickey’s struggle and eventual failure to create a third major league, the Continental, as well as the last Yankee season of baseball’s most successful manager, Casey Stengel (whose team lost the 1960 Series on Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the seventh game), makes for compelling reading.
Shapiro, author of “The Last Good Season,” is in top form breaking new ground and providing new awarenesses of a little reported on chapter in American sports history – the aborted attempt by Branch Rickey to create the Continental League and Casey Stengel’s yen to remake the ways in which the national pastime was played. A good read.
“Mr. Shapiro tells his tale with verve. . . . It’s an enjoyable ride.”
The Weekend Journal’s review by Richard Tofel
and an excerpt from the introduction
