The Glory of Their Times : The Story
of Baseball Told By the Men Who
Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
Lives Up To The Hype - The Best Baseball Book Ever
The voices of the games distant past continue to reverberate with a
distinct freshness in Lawrence S. Ritters The Glory of Their Times. An oral
history of the game in the first two decades of the century, Glory sends out
its impressive roster of players to tell their own stories, and what stories
they tell--the story of their times as well as of their game; the scorecard
includes Rube Marquard, Babe Herman, Stan Coveleski, Smoky Joe
Wood, and Wahoo Sam Crawford. A delight from cover to cover, Glory is
the next best thing to having been there in the days when the ball may
have been dead, but the personalities were anything but.
Personal Review: The Glory of Their Times : The Story of
Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
"The Glory of their Times" is a book of personality, a book of passion, in
which 22 baseball players of the 1890s to the 1930s tell their stories.

Originally taped by Lawrence Ritter in the 1960s, these oral remembrances
are now very valuable. There are no longer any live witnesses of the
earlier times. The later times are fast escaping conscious memory, setting
aside the contribution of Paul Waner, the only interviewee who played past
1938.
I met Rube Marquard, the first interviewee presented, in 1975, during
induction week at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Marquard,
who had been inducted four years earlier, had a cane. He told me that
New York Giant manager John McGraw was the greatest manager ever,
and that Marquard's Giant teammate, pitcher Christy Mathewson, and
others of his day played for the love of the sport. "Today, all the players
want is money," he said. What would he say about the players of 2009?
Giant catcher Chief Meyers also emphasized the love of the sport
argument to Ritter: "Most of us would have paid them just to let us play."
Regardless of the veracity of these statements, modern players benefit
from a huge legacy the old timers bequeathed to them. Ritter states in his
preface that they were "men who chased a dream and, at least for a time,
caught up with it and lived with it...They were pioneers...They entered an
endeavor which lacked social respectability, and when they left it, it was
America's National Game."
The years 1905-1914, after baseball's rules became relatively settled, are
particularly special for me. With the home run a rare treat, bunting, contact
hitting, good baserunning, and stolen bases were the keys. The Chicago
Cubs had their "peerless leader," Frank Chance; Three Finger Brown and
their other great pitchers; and their Tinker-to-Evers to Chance double play
trio. They won the pennant every year from 1906 to 1910 except 1909,
when Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates beat Ty Cobb's Detroit Tigers in
the World Series as Wagner vastly outplayed the nasty Cobb. In 1908,
Giant Fred Merkle's boner, recounted in detail here by teammate Al
Bridwell, forced a playoff between the Giants and Cubs. The Cubs won
and beat Cobb's Tigers in the World Series. This was one of the greatest
seasons ever, and together with the 1909 season represented a peak in
fan interest.
The famous action shot of Cobb sliding into New York Highlander third
baseman Jimmy Austin is in this book, and Austin discusses Cobb, spikes
and all. Sam Crawford, Cobb's teammate, picks Wagner over Cobb as
the best player he ever saw (plus, for what it is worth, Tris Speaker over
Willie Mays in centerfielding). Tommy Leach, Wagner's teammate, picks
Wagner as "[t]he greatest everything ever."
Rube Bressler tells us about the great pitchers and the "$100,000" infield
of the Philadelphia A's. That is $100 million today. Red Sox outfielder
Harry Hooper and Smoky Joe Wood himself tell us about the Red Sox
fireballer's 1912 season, in which he went 34-5 and won 16 straight
games. Wood was the only pitcher of the time who could throw as hard as
Walter Johnson, and Wood beat him 1-0 in a regular season game that

was one of baseball's biggest draws (Johnson also won 16 straight that
year). Wood was almost the loser in the World Series finale, but Fred
Snodgrass dropped a fly ball in the 10th inning with the Giants ahead, and
they and their beloved Mathewson went down to a heartbreaking defeat.
Poor Snodgrass describes how, to no avail, he made a great catch on the
next play that only detail-minded baseball fans know about. Hooper tells us
he sure did remember, and he also recalls Babe Ruth as a young pitcher.
Bridwell states the best modern players are in the league of the best old
timers, but we can still appreciate the humor of Lefty O'Doul. He recounts
how he was at a dinner in about 1960 and acknowledged that Willie Mays
was a great fielder and quite a good baserunner but could not carry the bat
of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and some other old timers. Cobb hit .367 lifetime
when the spitball was legal, along with the emery ball and the shine ball. A
youngster asked O'Doul what he thought Cobb would hit today. O'Doul
replied, "about the same as Mays, maybe .340." The kid asked, "Then
why do you say Cobb was so great if he could only hit .340 or so with this
lively ball?"
O'Doul replied, "You have to take into consideration, the man is now
seventy-three years old."
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