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Eight decades is a very long time in professional sports. Yet eighty years after their spectacular season and thrilling World Series victory, the 1927 New York Yankees are still widely recognized as the greatest team in Major League Baseball history. Not only did they dominate their league and run away with the pennant, they became the first American League team ever to win the World Series in four games straight. They weren't called "Murderers' Row" for nothing. But many of the most fascinating and exciting details of that storied season have long been forgotten; many more have never been revealed to the public—until now.
In Five O'Clock Lightning, award-winning sports writer Harvey Frommer puts you in the dugout, takes you aboard the team train, and lets you peek into the hotel rooms of the game's most celebrated team and its larger-than-life heroes. You'll meet legendary manager Miller Huggins, whose diminutive stature masked a gigantic store of baseball savvy; the young, robust, and exquisitely talented Lou Gehrig, known at that time as "the Buster"; the prickly but powerful Long Bob Meusel; the taciturn and talented Tony Lazzeri, anxious to redeem himself after blowing a key at-bat in the final game of the 1926 Series; and, towering over them all, the Babe.
Quite fittingly, the story of the '27 Yanks begins and ends with Babe Ruth: from his fabled, and very public, preseason contract negotiations with team owner Jake Ruppert, which made Ruth the highest-paid player in baseball, to his raucous barnstorming tour with Gehrig following their spectacular victory in the Series. In between, he hit his sixtieth home run on the next-to-last day of the season, topping his previous world record of fifty-nine, set in 1921.
Harvey Frommer draws on a huge amount of archival material—some controversial, some never before published—including oral history from '27 Yankees and opponents, long-buried letters, and diary notations. He paints a vivid and detailed portrait of the best team in baseball chasing greatness in Jazz Age, Prohibition-era New York City in all its pre-Depression glory.
Packed with facts and statistics that cover everything from batting averages and fielding percentages to standings, player salaries, and World Series shares, Five O'Clock Lightning reveals the hidden history of the most memorable team ever to play the game of baseball.
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