Red Legs and Black Sox

Dellinger, Susan. Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series.  Cincinnati, Ohio; Emmis Books, 2006. The Cincinnati Reds have won five World Series Championships.  For most modern fans, the Big Red Machine (1975, 1976) and the Nasty Boys (1990) probably come to mind first among the championship [...]

High Stakes

Curry, Timothy Jon, Kent Schwirian, and Rachel A. Woldoff.  High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Downtown Redevelopment.  Columbus, Ohio; The Ohio State University Press, 2004. One of the recurrent themes spoken by developers and civic officials in Columbus as reported in High Stakes was that getting an NHL team would make the metropolis a Major [...]

A Complete History of the Negro Leagues

Ribowsky, Mark.  A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884 to 1955.  Revised and Updated.  New York; Citadel Press, 2002. There is much dispersed information about professional African-American baseball during the segregated years prior to 1947.  What is often referred to as “blackball” did not have a parallel history to major league baseball and it [...]

The Curse of Rocky Colavito

Pluto, Terry.  The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty Year Slump. Gray & Company; Cleveland, 1994. In my mind, The Curse of Rocky Colavito is the definitive Cleveland Indians tale.  The team had some success in the late 1940s and early 1950s and recent playoff runs, but these were more aberrations [...]

The 1976 Cincinnati Reds

Feldmann, Doug.  The 1976 Cincinnati Reds: Last Hurrah for the Big Red Machine.  Jefferson, North Carolina; McFarland & Company, 2009. There is a fine tradition in sports writing of telling the story of a baseball season.  In particular, this usually covers one team.  While the framework of a baseball season is rather structured (Offseason transactions, [...]

Misfits!

Hetrick, J. Thomas. Misfits! Baseball’s Worst Ever Team. Clifton, Va: Pocol Press. (1991). 100th Anniversary Edition. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders were the ultimate Cleveland sports team. The owners (the Robinson brothers) were loathed, it seemed like the league was against the team, the players were mostly sub-par, and those players that were not, were traded [...]

Baseball through small-town eyes

Taylor, Dale. Baseball through small-town eyes. Shawnee State University: Portsmouth, Ohio, 1996. While I would not say this work is a literary masterpiece, it does accomplish what it sets out to do in chronicling a century of baseball in Portsmouth and southern Ohio. After reading the collection of articles, it becomes evident that the eyes [...]