Clifton Blue Parker

One of my first books of baseball was Connie Mack's Baseball Book. It was a easy text about how to play the game. I studied it and after many years and sans cover, still treasure it today. Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons by Clifton Blue Parker was a must read for me as soon as I realized whose team was involved. I had heard of Buckfoot Al but knew next to nothing about him. Many aspects of his life and of baseball of the 1930s were welcome nuggets of information. Parker demonstrates his talent as a historian in satisfying detail.

Al Simmons was a special player as an outfielder and clean-up hitter for the dynastic Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack. He was a prodigious hitter who did have problems with injuries that probably limited the shine on his statistics. Simmons was like so many of the players on the early teams (pre-television) who were real characters often larger than life yet approachable.

Unless you have a unjustifiable aversion to baseball and early 20th century American history, you will enjoy this Mr. Parker's book.… (más)

Al Simmons, the cleanup hitter for Connie Mack’s great Athletics clubs of the early 1930s, may be most analogous to a more contemporary stars like Dick Allen or Albert Belle: a ferocious hitting talent who achieved greatness—but less of it than expected. In Simmons’ case this is because injuries only let him play as many as 140 games in one season during the second half of his career, though afterwards Simmons admitted that he could have played more and, given how close he got to 3,000 hits, wished that he had.

Parker’s biography is well-documented and easy to read, with a total focus on Simmons as ballplayer. Major personal and world events such as marriage, divorce, and war are mentioned, but mostly to provide context. This emphasis shows us how Simmons was viewed in his era (as the best center fielder in the game) and how he got there, but leaves a much weaker impression of the him as a person than last year’s portrait of another Pole in the Hall of Fame, Stan Musial: An American Life. To be fair, though, Simmons died before he was sixty, and Parker give us a solid picture of a worthy and under-appreciated subject as well as a welcome light on an A’s team that, with Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove, may have been better than Babe Ruth’s Yankees.… (más)

I'm surprised by how riveting I'm finding this account of 80-years-ago baseball. Not because I don't like old-timey baseball but because I was unfamiliar with the title character and only vaguely familiar with the A's of this period --- I didn't know Ty Cobb finished his career there, had only recently heard about Jimmie Foxx's run at Ruth's single-season HR record --- and these hidden stories are a big part of the reason I'm enjoying the book so much.

This book is exceedingly through in documenting the facts. Almost to a fault, as when sometimes you may read three versions of a story only to have Parker conclude the whole thing is probably a newspaper fabrication. But that is another strength of the book as well. So nice to have the historian's process laid bare.

Recommended for those with an interest How the Game Once Was.… (más)

Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons was an interesting and well researched book about the 1920's baseball player. Born into a Polish immigrant family in Milwaukee, baseball was the fun part of life. His dream of playing professional which was not diminished even after his father's death and while he had to work to support his Mother & family.

Playing for the Philadelphia A's he became an amazing player with an unusual batting stance, and an angry face. This book was very straight forward with the facts mixed in with antidotes from Simmons life. It was a great book for baseball lovers and pretty interesting for non baseball fans as well.… (más)