July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty

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Summary: An exhaustive if unfocused account of a baseball tragedy.
Review: "July 2, 1903" is an apt title for this book because it tells practically all that's known about the circumstances of the death of baseball great Big Ed Delahanty: We know when it happened, but not much else. The title is also an adept parallel to the book itself, because the book isn't really about his death. It reads less like Agatha Christie than like an Inquiry into Our National Pastime, 1880-1910. What Sowell is trying to do, it seems, is to locate Delahanty's tragedy within a cultural and socio-economic context; not so much to sleuth out the whodunit of the case (accident? foul play? suicide?) as to understand the ethos in which it could occur. That very little is known of Delahanty beyond his ballplaying forces Sowell to focus that much more keenly on the environment surrounding Delahanty's death, rather than on Delahanty-the-Man. It's an intriguing approach, and Sowell has done exhaustive research. The book is full of colorful anecdotes, evocative details, and revealing sidebars. He's clearly fascinated by the political and economic maneuvering and lowlife rowdyism that defined baseball in its early days. For awhile, so was I. Eventually, though, the accumulation of amusing stories, surprising trivia and unusual nicknames grows stale, because it never adds up to anything more than the sum of its parts. Delahanty's death, in fact, gets lost in the shuffle, and the book's last chapter isn't even about him. Sowell could have arranged his information into a tight frame around the mystery of Delahanty's death, which would have evoked the feel and rhythm of the atmosphere surrounding it. Instead, he allows the trivia to overwhelm the ostensible subject of the book, and in the end I didn't learn much about the death of Big Ed Delahanty. Sowell should be commended for digging up so much information and for discovering so many interesting tidbits about baseball in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of them are fascinating, and it's good to have them collected in one book. Sowell himself is obviously excited by them too -- so excited that he didn't want to leave any of them out, so... he didn't.

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Summary: July 2, 1903 revisited
Review: I first reviewed Mike's book when it was published some years ago, when we both worked at The Tulsa Tribune in Tulsa, Okla. At the time (early '90s), baseball was at the crest of a resurgence in popularity: The sparkle of movies like "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham" had not yet faded - even John Sayles' unblinking "Eight Men Out" put only a slight negative spin on the sports' image. In my review then, I skirted some issues that bothered me, attributing them to what I saw as a lack of focus. Upon recent rereading, however, I would classify "July 2" as the strongest and bravest of Sowell's three books - and the other two are quite courageous, indeed. What Mike did was to take us back to professional baseball's beginnings, to present us with the ugly truth. The 1919 "Black Sox" scandal was only a slight sore that, if peeled away, would have revealed the disease at the heart of the game and would have been traced to the shocking practices of team owners, who handled the lives of players like so many kids trading cards. They could not afford this, and it was fearful to speculate what they might do to protect their interests. Once read, "July 2" makes a book like Ken Burns' and Geoffrey C. Ward's "Baseball" make more sense.

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Summary: ED DELHANTY-A GREAT BALL PLAYER AND A GREAT PHILLIE
Review: I READ THIS BOOK WHEN IT WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1993.I HAVE BEEN A PHILLIES FAN FOR 44 YEARS AND I TOOK SPECIAL INTEREST IN THIS MAN WHO IS THE ONLY PLAYER TO WIN A BATTING CHAMPIONSHIP IN THE AMERICAN AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE.A MUST FOR ALL PHILLIES FANS AND BASEBALL FANS!!!!!!!