Review of "The New York Game"

Baseball and New York City have been connected in many ways throughout the sport's history. This book is the best illustration of that connection and should be on the shelves of any fan of the game or of the city.  

Title/Author:

“The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City” by Kevin Baker

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: The old cliché of how art can imitate real life can be applied here in this book of the history of New York baseball and the rise of the city by Kevin Baker.  Of course, one would have to consider baseball to be a form of “art”, but even so, this is a great illustration of the rise of baseball from a game scattered across the five boroughs of the city and how it compares to the rise of New York City as a major world metropolis.

The book starts off with an emphasis that is one did not already know this (most do), baseball was not invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York.  Instead, the earliest origins can be traced to various fields and street of the city in the mid 19^th century.  From there, the book tells the story of baseball in the city up to World War II with great detail and with emphasis on the three teams in New York during this portion of the 20^th century – the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants.  Each team has excellent very good, detailed descriptions of their star players (most notably Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig for the Yankees, as one might expect) and of the managers.  For the latter, this is especially true for Giants manager John McGraw.

Intertwined with the history of the ballclubs is the history of the city and how it rose in stature to what it was at the time of the end of the book.  Just like the excellent description of 19^th century baseball of which many do not know about the New York experience such as the New York Knickerbockers – no, not to be confused with the basketball team. What is also very interesting about including the history of city politics is how they were tied in with the baseball teams.  The best writing about this connection is Baker’s telling of how Tammany Hall politics were involved in the founding of the Yankees.  The story of how they were also squeezed out of the Polo Grounds and ended up building a nice little park called Yankee Stadium also made for good reading.

If there is a problem with any part of the book, it comes near the end, where the stories about the teams, players, and city in the 1940’s doesn’t seem to cover all aspects as well as the rest of the book as well as an ending that seemed abrupt.  But by then, I was so enamored with the rest of the book that it didn’t matter – this was an excellent, albeit lengthy, read on baseball and New York City.

I wish to thank the publisher for providing a review copy of the book. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

Link: Amazon.com: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City eBook : Baker, Kevin: Kindle Store