Cap Anson 4: Bigger Than Babe Ruth--Captain Anson of Chicago (Cap Anson) (Cap Anson) (Cap Anson) - Hardcover

Howard W. Rosenberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0972557431 ISBN 13: 9780972557436

Publisher: Howard W. Rosenberg, 2006

Synopsis

Cap Anson 4 starts out by defending its audacious subtitle, Bigger Than Babe Ruth: Captain Anson of Chicago. It does so by arguing that Anson drew the most interesting coverage in print, over a long playing and post-career, of any player in the sport's history.
 
Mostly a biography after that point, Cap Anson 4 traces Anson's life starting from childhood. It starts from his growing up in a log cabin in Iowa, and shows him exerting his "bluff and gruff" personality as longtime captain-manager of the famed Chicago National League club. The book also explores his varied post-career in the public eye, including his tenure as city clerk of Chicago, the city's number three post; founding of a semi-pro team called Anson's Colts; his personal bankruptcy; and a long vaudeville career that is unmatched among Hall of Famers. Anson, besides being the first big star in the game's history, was also the first one to age, until his death, with still-occasional heavy coverage.
 
The presentation of his playing career is largely chronological, with a major exception that is rare in the baseball biography genre. That exception is: ten topical analyses of his relations with colorful and long-time teammates (other than with Kelly, which was featured in Cap Anson 2). The topical analyses are peppered throughout the chronology. One of the ten sidebars has teammate (and future evangelist) Billy Sunday as its focus.
 
Cap Anson 4, at least as of 2006, likely held the record for the most graphics (181) in a book that doubled as a baseball Hall of Famer's definitive biography. On the other hand, Anson is the player most often blamed for bringing about the sport's "color line" that Jackie Robinson broke. For being the culprit (even though the case is actually speculative), Anson has been vilified, including in Ken Burns's 1994 PBS series on the sport. Over more than two dozen pages, an appendix examines claims and counterclaims on the subject.

About this title

Review:

Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 25, 2006
'makes a compelling case for Anson’s primacy as the most important figure in baseball history – even greater than Babe Ruth'

Todd Leopold, CNN.com, April 6, 2006
'[Rosenberg] continues his series on [the 19th-century] era’s baseball with the controversial Chicago captain and manager at its center'

Gabriel Schechter, History Review of New Books, Heldref Publications, Fall 2006
'a balanced reckoning of Anson’s role in creating the ‘color barrier’ that excluded African-Americans from professional baseball for sixty years.'

David Zweifel, Madison (Wisc.) Capital Times, March 28, 2007
'this hard-cover book is replete with great baseball history that will entertain and enlighten the true baseball fan'

Bob D’Angelo, Tampa Tribune, June 25, 2006
'Rosenberg's dogged attention to detail, no matter how trivial, gives the reader the most complete portrait ever about Cap Anson.'

Kirk Wessler, executive sports editor, Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star, May 19, 2006
'an exhaustingly researched and informative description of baseball in the 19th century.' Among the 'good sports reads this summer.'

From the Inside Flap:

Author removed this section as extraneous.

About this edition

• Publisher: Howard W. Rosenberg
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0972557431
• ISBN 13: 9780972557436
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560