Gil Bogen

In which is narrated the lives of the "fleetest of bear cubs" who were forever "pricking our gonfalon bubble" with their expertise at the double play. The book is a masterpiece of meticulous research and is well-structured, but also contains significant flaws. The author has done a very good job of structuring his narrative so that he weaves the three players' stories seamlessly together during the years they were playing together and keeping them discrete during the other times in their lives. He's also not too concerned with game narratives, an approach which I like. And the quality and quantity of his research is outstanding. Things about the book which I liked less well included, first and foremost, that he doesn't remind the reader how to pronounce Johnny Evers' oft-mangled surname. He also writes in a breathless razzmatazz style which I came to dislike, especially since it tried to lead the reader down some wrong paths, i.e., his relentless drumbeat about Joe Tinker's 'beautiful wife' when the woman pictured was attractive neither by the standards of her own time nor of ours. And spelling, especially of surnames, is sloppy. Some will be annoyed by his counter-revisionist insistence that, contrary to stathead insistence, the three deserve their place in the Baseball Hall of Fame after all, but he sets out his to me weak case briefly and forthrightly. These guys belong in the Hall of Pretty Good, not the Hall of Fame.… (mehr)