Charles C. Alexander
â€œHe ate gunpowder every morning,â€ complained one umpire, â€œand washed it down with warm blood.â€ That described John McGraw, who in the 1890s was the rowdiest member of the ferocious Baltimore Orioles, the club that pioneered the hit-and-run, the cutoff, the squeeze play, and the â€œBaltimore chop.â€ In 1902 he began his thirty-season reign as manager of the Giants, winning ten pennantsâ€”a record matched only by Casey Stengel. His career in baseball spanned forty years and two erasâ€”from the gameâ€™s raucous early days to its emergence as big business.Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of ,Ty Cobb,, calls John McGraw â€œperhaps the single most significant figure in baseballâ€™s history before Babe Ruth transformed the game with his mammoth home runs and unparalleled showmanship.â€
Sports,Baseball,Biography,Sports,Sports,Nonfiction,History
John McGraw