The Old Ball Game; How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [12], 241, [3] pages. Illustrations. Index. Benjamin Franklin Deford III (December 16, 1938 - May 28, 2017) was an American sportswriter and novelist. Over the course of four decades, he was a sports commentator on NPR's Morning Edition (from 1980 to 2017). Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated from 1962 until 2017, and was a reporter for the Real Sports on HBO. He wrote 18 books. A member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, Deford was six times voted National Sportswriter of the Year, and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year. In 2012, Deford became the first magazine recipient of the Red Smith Award. In 2013, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal, was presented with the William Allen White Citation for "excellence in journalism" by the University of Kansas. He became the first sports journalist ever to receive the National Press Foundation's highest honor, the W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. Derived from a Kirkus review: One of our more evocative sportswriters details the importance of Mathewson and McGraw in raising baseball to the status of a national pastime. Christy Mathewson was an exemplar as he was tall, handsome, kind, educated, the beau ideal and a pitcher whose statistics didn't just speak but bellowed his dominance. At his side on the New York Giants was McGraw: pugnacious, hardscrabble, shanty Irish, tough, field-smart, and as tough as any ballplayer ever was. Deford is in command of this story, making this a piece of social as of sporting history. Baseball would capture the public imagination. Deford writes with a sparkle in his eye. He's ready to tip his hat to the Giants for the passions they stirred, the controversy of their manager, and the deserved popularity of their pitching ace. It's Deford's reach of baseball knowledge, its color and historical circumstance that sets this one apart.