Susan Dellinger

This revisionist account of the 1919 Black Sox World Series, written by Cincinnati Reds star Edd Roush's granddaughter, is two books in one. The first half is a conventional biography of Roush's early years, rich owing to liberal chats with her granddad and grandma, access to the family scrapbook, and family snapshots which are also included. The second half is a minute examination of the Black Sox affair, revisionist in several ways. The author largely skips the usual suspects; Arnold Rothstein, Sleepy Bill Burns, Abe Attell, and Billy Maharg are introduced but relatively quickly share the stage with lesser known cliques from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and, oddly, Des Moines. She closes the book by advancing evidence that two Reds pitchers were also in thrall to gamblers and pleading in the alternative that the White Sox didn't throw the Series, but even if they had, the Reds were the better team and would have won the Series anyway. She appends a symposium of quotations from various individuals who agree with her thesis. Unsurprisingly, most of them are Reds players. One can believe all this or not, but the main problem with the book is that it ought to have been two books. Roush deserves a full biography, not one that ends when he was all of twenty-six. And the rehash of the investigations and trials of the affair are probably of at least as much interest to the true crime enthusiast as any baseball audience.… (más)