The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter, (Perennial, 2002), 360 pages.
The Glory of Their Times is the quintessential introduction to the “early days of baseballâ€. The death of Ty Cobb in 1961 prompted Lawrence S. Ritter to reach the startling conclusion that years of baseball history were slowly vanishing. With few written accounts and records in existence, knowledge of what life was like for a ballplayer in the early twentieth century was gradually being lost to the grave forever.
Ritter took it upon himself to rescue that history for generations of baseball fans. Armed with a tape recorder, he tracked down twenty-two former Major Leaguers and allowed them to tell their stories. Originally published in 1966, the Glory of Their Times was immediately hailed as a triumph.
With fascinating stories told in language full of colour and life, each chapter reveals not just the story of the individual players, but their recollections of their contemporaries and the lives they led. An “enlarged version†was published eighteen years later, including the recollections of four additional ballplayers.
The fact that this is a collection of edited transcripts of interviews plays a crucial role in the book’s success. Committing thoughts to paper (or Word document) is a conscious act, where each word can be looked over countless times and re-written. Whether knowingly or not, it often inspires a process of self-editing.
This can certainly still take place when recounting stories verbally, but it is much easier for the interviewee to let their inhibitions take a back seat using this method. No need to concern yourself with punctuation or correct grammar; just let the stories flow out from the banks of your memory.
Ritter states in his original preface that the tape recorder was “soon forgotten†and the subsequent openness of the ballplayers is striking. This is also due to the skill Ritter showed in turning the hours of interviews into concise yet still richly entertaining chapters that enable you to feel as though each ballplayer is sat reminiscing in front of you.
One of the joys of this book is reading different ballplayers recalling the same events in slightly different ways. Fred Snodgrass gets the opportunity to explain his infamous “Snodgrass muffâ€, where the outfielder dropped a crucial fly ball during the 1912 World Series.
Harry Hooper later gives his version of what happened as the player who was in the batting circle at the time, while Specs Torporcer recalls what it was like as a thirteen year old announcing the “tragic events†to the heaving crowd in a saloon where he was being paid to post the score on a blackboard.
Beyond the specific events and players, there is a natural tendency for both the interviewees and the reader to compare the “early days†of baseball to the current state of the game (noting that for the majority of the interviewees, the current game they were referring to was the mid 1960s).
A cynic may approach this book expecting to find a series of old-timers arguing that “it was harder in my dayâ€. Although the tone is rarely one of looking down on the modern era, the ballplayers here do often explain the relative hardships they suffered, but it would be difficult for anyone not to conclude that their claims are true.
The equipment and playing conditions were extremely primitive compared to those enjoyed by a modern ballplayer and this undoubtedly had a major impact on the way the game was played. Edd Roush explains that prior to 1921, they used a “dead ball†that was changed only three or four times a game, rather than sixty or seventy times as we see today.
Not only was the ball harder to see, it was also harder to hit for long distances; therefore singles, doubles and stolen bases were the order of the day (what we would call the “small ball†way of playing). The more you learn about the history of baseball, the more you realise how difficult it is to compare players like-for-like from different eras.
It wasn’t just the actual events on the field that were different either. Travel was and always will be the bane of a ballplayer’s life, yet few modern-day players would swap their long flights for the rail travel described by Lefty O’Doul:
“You’d get on a coal-burning train with the old wicker seats, carrying your own uniform and your own bats and everything, and ride from Des Moines, Iowa, to Wichita, Kansas. All night and part of the next day. If you opened the window you’d be eating soot and cinders all night long. If you closed the window you’d roast to death. Get off in the morning either filthy or without a wink of sleep. Usually bothâ€.
The most telling difference though is the way in which young men became professional ballplayers in the early twentieth century. Today, each Major League team has a scouting network, players are signed via the amateur draft and the potential for earning a decent salary or becoming a multi-millionaire is readily apparent. In the early 1900s, the process of being signed was haphazard and playing baseball professionally was certainly not considered a ‘respectable’ way to earn a living.
Rube Marquard was told by his father that “Ballplayers are no good … and they never will be any good†and when he signed his first professional contract there was no parental pride on show: “you’re breaking my heart and I don’t ever want to see you again†was his father’s response. Only years later, when Marquard was pitching for the New York Giants, did his father relent from his position.
The importance of the Glory of Their Times is in itself an example of how the sport has changed. The media coverage of baseball today is all-consuming and we hear from ballplayers so frequently, via published interviews, newspaper/magazine stories and autobiographies, that a modern equivalent might seem unnecessary (this will be put to the test by “Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key events that Shaped Modern Baseballâ€, released in the U.S. yesterday). That couldn’t be further from the truth in the context of the “earl days†of baseball. This book is immensely valuable as an insight into the sport’s history, as well as being an engrossing and enchanting read.
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