No. 1.
Boston, Pittsburg
Who are we?
We are the rooters for 19-3
We will win,
Go tell your pa,
We Beaneaters, Beaneaters,
Rah! Rah! Rah!
No. 2.
Five games, Five games
We want five
We are here and all alive.
Biff! Bang! Bang, Bang, Bang!
Zim! Zam! Zam, Zam, Zam!
No. 3.
In the good old summer time,
Our Boston Base Ball Nine
Beat the teams--east and west,
Now they're first in line.
The Pittsburgs they are after us,
O me! O me! O my!
We'll do them as we did the rest
In the good old summer time.
Rooter's Souvenir
Boston - Pittsburg
Oct,. 1903. M. T. McGreevy
Okay, enough is enough. I held off reviewing this book because it seemed so obvious how the story had to end. Just as Mr. Masur's terrific account of the inaugural World Series, in 1903, tells of the Boston Red Sox winning an improbable come from behind victory over the mighty Pittsburg Pirates of Honus Wagner, so too would the Red Sox win a hundred years later... Alas, it was not to be.
However, as we settle in for a long winter of second-guessing Grady Little, Mr. Masur offers a welcome escape. Not only does he detail each game of the Series--including providing the boxscores--he also does something similar to what Daniel Okrent did in his classic, Nine Innings, which is to intercut game action and backstory, so that the events of the Series drive the narrative, but we get thorough histories of the American and National Leagues and the enmity between them, as well as biographical sketches of Wagner, Cy Young, and many others. The book is rich with information, from the reason for that odd spelling of the Pirates' hometown above to the fact that those Pirates, despite being the best team in baseball, drew just 326,000 fans for the entire '03 season--which must be less than the Red Sox drew this season just in their home games against the Yankees.
Perhaps the best aspect of the book though is that with all of this detail Mr. Masur manages to reconstruct a sense for us of what baseball, and indeed America, was like at that time. There are surprisingly strong continuities--salary disputes, unruly crowds, and much about the game as it's played on the field--but much that makes one nostalgic. Personally, I really enjoyed the many appearances by the Royal Rooters, a gang of die-hard Sox fans who even took the train to Pittsburg to root on their team. Theirs is a fanaticism about and a joy in baseball that resonates down to us across a century, but which differs in its innocence and its communitarian nature.
The book, though it proved not to be an omen for Red Sox triumph, is wonderful.
(Reviewed:25-Nov-03)
Grade: (A)
