Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy - A Book Review

When SportsCenter was the "Big Show", Keith Olbermann used to clamor on and on about baseball players from different eras and how Nap Lajoie and Honus Wagner were the greatest there ever were--their heroics on the field to be commended and applauded.  Olbermann revered them, his colleague Dan Patrick was ever the skeptic.  It made for great television, if not definitive closure on the argument.  Patrick would complain, "We never saw 'em-how can we compare 'em?"

What makes Cait Murphy's book so compelling is that after reading it, I feel like I saw 'em.  And not just Nap and Honus, either.  Murphy compiles a list of the hooligans, gentlemen, ruffians, and ageless giants of the game in her new book "Crazy '08".  It is a remarkable work of non-fiction that reads like gripping historical literature; the cast of characters like Cobb, Tinker, Evers, Chance, and Brown are interesting in themselves, but we get so much more than their stories.  Murphy infuses this book with owners' and managers' backgrounds, stories of the dark underbelly of societies at the time, insights about the backdrop cities for these ballplayers-all with the incredible description and articulation of a seasoned baseball journalist on the diamond beat.  When reading you can smell the pitchers' breath, the stench of tobacco, the sweat on the backs of the boys of summer.  Your heart jolts as the Giants and the Cubs move ever closer to the pennant, jockeying for position.

I'm fascinated by Murphy's desire to even tell this story.  At once it would seem that today's fan wouldn't care-why would one want to read about this in the first place?  Does anyone have a passing interest in it save the aged, grandfatherly fan that pines over and over about the purist days, longing for Ebbets Field to be rebuilt?  But we do care from the very first word to the end.  Her writing style is as expressive as it gets. While discussing baseball, from time to time, Murphy includes little "timeouts" that delve into some historical events that occurred at the time.  These little vignettes (the harrowing tale of Belle Gunness comes to mind immediately) are as intriguing and entertaining as the games themselves.  The reader is taken to another time and place-realizing that the world 100 years ago was just as strange (and possibly as relevant and creepy) as it is today.

Yes, Murphy does make us care about a game where players made less, about a game that was far from having a DH, about a game that was decidedly, at the time, "middle class."  But Murphy makes us care--she isn't just simply a great writer, this book lifts her up to the level of miracle worker.