The Roaring Redhead: Larry MacPhail-Baseball's Great Innovator

For years the story of Leland Stanford "Larry" MacPhail―a man who had an important and enduring impact on the game of baseball―curiously remained untold, leaving a major gap in the chronicle of baseball history. Don Warfield provides the first and lasting link in that lore with The Roaring Redhead, a penetrating portrait of one of baseball's most passionate and fascinating personalities.

MacPhail, who was active in baseball from the early '30s to the late '40s, helped shape the contemporary version of the sport. He introduced night baseball to the major leagues, first in Cincinnati and then in Brooklyn; he pioneered air travel for baseball teams; he was responsible for the first televised diamond contest; he arranged the original "Old Timers Game." And, besides being an iconoclast in the baseball front office, he was adventuresome, as witnessed by his involvement in an abortive plot to capture the exKaiser Wilhelm from his exile in Holland at the end of World War I. A study about this dynamic, volatile man could not be dull and, despite undistinguished writing by Warfield (a retired Illinois businessman), this most certainly is not. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

MacPhail was a larger-than-life baseball executive with the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Yankees from 1933 to 1947. He was the first to commission radio and TV broadcast of baseball games and to have his teams play night baseball; he was the driving force behind the major league pension plan. Besides bringing baseball into the modern era, he rebuilt ballparks, increased fan attendance, and won championships in both leagues. As noteworthy as these accomplishments are, it is for his temper and outrageous conduct that he has become the stuff of baseball legend. Wakefield has thoroughly documented both MacPhail's career and his front-page feuds. This book is as much a history of a crucial era in baseball as it is a biography. Recommended for those interested in baseball history. Dennis Dillon, Univ. of Texas Libs., Austin
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.