Old Hoss Radbourn - Stats inconsistency?

[Mountaineer1999]

Originally Posted by z28jd

He was much more interested in describing 1884 life off the field than talking about specific games.

This is what I thought made the book so interesting, baseball against the backdrop of life in 1884.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer1999

This is what I thought made the book so interesting, baseball against the backdrop of life in 1884.

I'm with you. "59 in '84" was fantastic. I especially liked his description of beer vendors - warm beer, one cup for everybody. Uggggggggh.

[btryin]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer1999

This is what I thought made the book so interesting, baseball against the backdrop of life in 1884.

I agree with this. I enjoyed reading about the context of baseball with life in that era. Gave me some understanding and connection with the roots of baseball as I grew up with it starting in the 1960's - connecting the wide-spaced dots.

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer1999

This is what I thought made the book so interesting, baseball against the backdrop of life in 1884.

The problem for me is that there was more of that than the actual information on Radbourn. I bought it for the baseball content. I also didn't like the skimming over of many games, plus the constant speculation of what people were doing or thinking on specific days. No need for that over and over.

So it was more than just the concentration on non-baseball stuff. As someone mentioned, talking about the beer vendor is great because that's baseball related. Him going in depth on the town and things around it, was not for me. Really took away from the subject. You can set the mood for the era fairly quickly and then get to the subject. He broke away from the main subject numerous times to go on tangents.