UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Book Jacket: "Baseball's Greatest Season, 1924" by R. Browning

Reed Browning

A lively account of the only time Washington was first in war, first in peace, and first in the national pastime

Finalist for the Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball Research

No season in the history of baseball matched 1924 for escalating excitement and emotional investment by fans. It began with observers expecting yet another World Series between the Yankees and the Giants. It ended months later when the perennially hapless Washington Nationals (Senators), making their first Series appearance, grabbed the world championship by scoring the season-ending run on an improbable play in the bottom of the twelfth inning of the seventh game.

In alternating chapters of narrative and analysis, Reed Browning explains how the 1924 season marked the last time a team playing old-fashioned "inside" baseball won the championship. Along the way, the season featured two taut September pennant races and a variety of compelling human interest stories: George Sisler failing to recover his once incomparable batting eye after a sinus infection; Rogers Hornsby batting .424, a figure no player has matched since; Babe Ruth overcoming injuries in the opening and closing phases of the season to win his only batting crown; Dazzy Vance registering one of the greatest seasons that any post-dead-ball pitcher has ever chalked up; and the revered Walter Johnson, presumed over the hill, returning to glory in the regular season and then, after two disappointing Series starts, winning the seventh game in relief.

The season even had elements of a morality play, when in its closing days a Giant tried to bribe an opponent into throwing a game. Disclosure of the proposal prompted an American baseball public, already pulling for the underdog Washington team, to cast the Series as a struggle between good and evil.

In addition to capturing the mounting drama of this extraordinary season, Browning places the story in a broader historical context. He discusses how baseball operated as a business in the 1920s, who the major league ball players were, what the fans and ballparks were like, how the game of baseball was played, and why the Washington club was able to win.

"The organization of the book is effective. In alternating chapters, the author first charts the season and then comments on particular developments within major league baseball. Reed Browning deftly examines the ebb and flow of the two pennant races won by John McGraw's New York Giants in the National League and the usually forlorn Washington entry in the American League. Both races were filled with excitement and nicely propel Browning's narrative."
The Historian
"Browning is a graceful and vigorous writer who has the ability to take you back to the games themselves in a startlingly immediate way. . . . Other writers have focused on individual seasons to good effect. No one has done it better than Browning does here."

Ronald Story, editor of Sports in Massachusetts

Reed Browning is professor of history and former provost at Kenyon College. He is author of Cy Young: A Baseball Life, as well as several books on European history.

Sport History / American History
232 pp., 32 Illus.
$26.95s cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-406-0
June 2003

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By the Same Author

Cy Young
A Baseball Life
Reed Browning
Winner of the Casey Award for the Best Baseball Book of the Year
Finalist for the Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball Research
A Choice Outstanding Academic Book
320 pp., 24 illus., LC 99-088275
$32.50t cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-262-2
$22.95t paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-398-8
2000 cloth, April 2003 paper
For more information, click here.

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