With the possible exception of 2004 no season in the history of baseball has matched 1924 for escalating excitement and emotional investment by fans. It began with observers expecting yet another World Series between the Yankees and the Giants. It ended months later when the Washington Nationals (Senators), making their first Series appearance, grabbed the world championship by scoring the season-ending run on an improbable play in the bottom of the twelfth inning of the seventh game.
On the eve of the return of major league baseball to Washington, D.C., Baseball's Greatest Season recovers the memory of the one and only time when the championship of the national pastime resided in the nation's capital.
On the eve of the return of major league baseball to Washington, D.C., Baseball's Greatest Season recovers the memory of the one and only time when the championship of the national pastime resided in the nation's capital.
Browning is a graceful and vigorous writer who has the ability to take you back to the games themselves in a startlingly immediate way . . . . Other writers have focused on individual seasons to good effect. No one has done it better than Browning does here.'—Ronald Story, editor of Sports in Massachusetts: Historical Essays
'Was 1924 really the greatest season? In a well-argued account, Browning cites as evidence the close races in both leagues and Walter Johnson's seventh-game World Series win for Washington over the Giants. . . . Browning weaves an appealing story, alternating his narrative chapters with ones about baseball's players, business dealings, and other sidelights.'—Library Journal
'Every baseball fan has a favorite year. . . . Browning, whose previous book was a readable life of Cy Young, says 1924 was a year of giants, the year that Rogers Hornsby hit .424 and Babe Ruth tore up the league with his hitting. Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, and George Sisler were still at the top of their games, and Walter Johnson came back with a wonderful season and a dramatic appearance in the last game of the World Series. . . . Browning is not a sportswriter but he is a historian with a flair for detail. He knows the game and why its fans love it so.'—Mansfield News Journal
'Baseball's Greatest Season, 1924 captures the mounting drama of this memorable season while placing the story in a broader context. [Browning] discusses how baseball operated as a business then, who the players were, what fans and parks were like and how the game was played.'—SABR Bookshelf
Reed Browning is professor of history and former provost at Kenyon College. He is author of Cy Young: A Baseball Life as well as several books on European history.
