1919 Black Sox Scandal
A01=Donald Dewey
A01=Nicholas Acocella
Aimee Semple McPherson
American History
Author_Donald Dewey
Author_Nicholas Acocella
baseball History
Biography
Blackmail
Category=DNBS
Category=SFC
Corruption
Deadball Era
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_sports-fitness
First Baseman
Fixed Game
John McGraw
Major League Baseball
MLB
New York Highlanders
New York Yankees
Perjury
Ragtime
Scapegoat
Sorts Politics
Sports
Sports Gambling
Sports History
Sports Scandal
Sports Studies
The Prince
Product details
- ISBN 9780803299399
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2016
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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As America lurched into the twentieth century, its national pastime was afflicted with the same moral malaise that was enveloping the rest of the nation. Players regularly bet on games, games were routinely fixed, and league politics were as dirty as the base paths. Against this backdrop, Hal Chase emerged as one of the game’s greatest players and also as one of its most scandalous characters.
With charisma and bravado that earned him the nickname The Prince, Chase charmed his way across America, spinning lies in the afternoon, dealing high-stakes poker at night, and gambling with beautiful women until dawn. Most notoriously of all, he undermined his stature as the era’s greatest first baseman by conniving with gamblers to fix games and draw teammates into his diamond conspiracies.
But as Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella reveal in their groundbreaking biography, The Black Prince of Baseball, Chase was also a scapegoat for baseball notables with hands even dirtier than his. These included league officials who ignored facts in an attempt to pin the 1919 Black Sox scandal on him and—a previously unknown twist—the fabled John McGraw, who perjured himself on a witness stand against the first baseman. Although Chase, contrary to popular belief, was never banned from the major leagues, meticulous research by the authors implicates him in other shady enterprises as well, not least an attempt to blackmail revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson.
As The Black Prince of Baseball makes clear, in his protean talents and larcenies, Hal Chase personified all the excesses of Ragtime.
With charisma and bravado that earned him the nickname The Prince, Chase charmed his way across America, spinning lies in the afternoon, dealing high-stakes poker at night, and gambling with beautiful women until dawn. Most notoriously of all, he undermined his stature as the era’s greatest first baseman by conniving with gamblers to fix games and draw teammates into his diamond conspiracies.
But as Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella reveal in their groundbreaking biography, The Black Prince of Baseball, Chase was also a scapegoat for baseball notables with hands even dirtier than his. These included league officials who ignored facts in an attempt to pin the 1919 Black Sox scandal on him and—a previously unknown twist—the fabled John McGraw, who perjured himself on a witness stand against the first baseman. Although Chase, contrary to popular belief, was never banned from the major leagues, meticulous research by the authors implicates him in other shady enterprises as well, not least an attempt to blackmail revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson.
As The Black Prince of Baseball makes clear, in his protean talents and larcenies, Hal Chase personified all the excesses of Ragtime.
Donald Dewey has published more than thirty books of fiction, nonfiction, and drama, including the history of baseball fans The Tenth Man and the novels The Fantasy League Murders and The Bolivian Sailor. Nicholas Acocella is the author or coauthor of several books on baseball, including (with Donald Dewey) The New Biographical History of Baseball: The Classic and Total Ballclubs.
