Edward Achorn re-creates this wondrous and hilarious world and illuminates a long-forgotten turning point in American baseball history.

—Kirkus Reviews

In 1883, the year Achorn recounts, non-top drama accompanied a pennant race. St. Louis Browns owner Chris von der Ahe and manager Ted Sullivan butted heads like George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. The Browns’ competitor, the desperate Philadelphia Athletics, signed a pitcher who literally jumped as he threw. Achorn examines the wear and tear of baseball’s early days while mixing in profiles of the rascals and renegades whose roles range from the historic (Fleet Walker, who in 1884 became the first African American to play professionally) to the colorful (slugger Pete Browning, who upon hearing that President Garfield had died asked, “What position did he play?”). Overall, this is a comprehensive and entertaining history of baseball’s overlooked early years.

—Publisher’s Weekly

Achorn (Providence Journal; Fifty-Nine in ’84) takes us back to when base ball was expressed in two words and one league—until the American Association was founded in 1882…. Von der Ahe made his fortune in St. Louis catering to other German immigrants with his saloon and beer garden. To increase his beer profits, he purchased the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1882 and revolutionized the presentation of professional baseball: Sunday games; beer sold at the stadium….. Achorn proposes Von der Ahe as the precursor to baseball entrepreneurs Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck, but Von der Ahe died broke, back in a saloon, tending bar. An enjoyable book that reinforces how baseball has evolved thanks to America’s immigrants.

—Library Journal

“We had a fine nine of willing players, but there were no opposition teams in sight. It was up to me to fill the breach,” Spinks said. So he pitched an intriguing idea to a fellow baseball writer, O.P. Caylor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, in another heavily German, lager-loving city that had lost its slot in the National League. He urged Caylor to round up whatever professional players were still lurking in town, slap on them the already nostalgic name of Cincinnati Reds, and bring them to St. Louis for a three-game, Saturday-through-Monday series in late May. Just as Chris Von der Ahe had hoped, thousands of people thronged Sportsmen’s Park. “The names St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds proved magic in so far as reawakening interest in the game in this city was concerned,” Spink recalled. At the end of the game, Von der Ahe, “happier, apparently, than any of the rest,” grasped Spink by the hand. “What a fine big crowd! But the game, Al, the game. How was it? Was it a pretty good game? You know I know nothing about it.”

Von der Ahe picked up the team for one reason—to sell more beer. Then he helped gather a group of ragtag professional clubs together to create a maverick new league that would fight the haughty National League, reinventing big-league baseball to attract Americans of all classes. Sneered at as “The Beer and Whiskey Circuit” because it was backed by brewers, distillers, and saloon owners, their American Association brought Americans back to enjoying baseball by offering Sunday games, beer at the ballpark, and a dirt-cheap ticket price of 25 cents.

The womanizing, egocentric, wildly generous Von der Ahe and his fellow owners filled their teams’ rosters with drunks and renegades, and drew huge crowds of rowdy spectators who screamed at umpires and cheered like mad as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns fought to the bitter end for the 1883 pennant.

In The Summer of Beer and Whiskey, Edward Achorn re-creates this wondrous and hilarious world of cunning, competition, and boozing, set amidst a rapidly transforming America. It is a classic American story of people with big dreams, no shortage of chutzpah, and love for a brilliant game that they refused to let die.

Los Angeles Times: “It’s the vibrancy of his story that resonates, the sense of Radbourn and these others not as historical figures but as human beings. The game they played was brutal, with no gloves or protective gear, and no substitutions except in the case of catastrophic injury. … With Fifty-nine in ’84, Achorn returns this remarkable season — and this remarkable pitcher — to something close to life.”

Charles P. Pierce, Boston Globe: “First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Stephen Ambrose wrote. … Achorn’s description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive.”

Bob Ryan, Boston Globe: “Edward Achorn’s Fifty-nine in ’84 left me envious, as in ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ … What makes his book work is that this is not solely a baseball story. It is a sort of social history, giving us a feel for both baseball as it existed 126 years ago and American life in general. … Writing a book is never fun or easy, but I’m going to guess Mr. Achorn enjoyed researching this one.”

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “Amazing story … Achorn’s work is reminiscent of ‘Seabiscuit’ … Like that great tale, this one is a story not just of the central character, but of the America of the time … richly detailed.”

Denver Post: “Full of passion … A brilliant look at the game’s early days.”

Dallas Morning News: “Achorn’s engaging prose, peppered with copious quotes from 19th-century journalists, reads like an eyewitness account. … The book is more than just the chronicles of one man’s record-breaking feat. It is a captivating look back at a time when baseball, like America, was raw, dangerous and exciting.”

Steve Buckley, Boston Herald: “Baseball fan or not, you will lose yourself in this wonderfully-written book. You will smell the manure on the streets of Providence. Your throat will burn from the booze and the tobacco. And your shoulder will ache.”

Baseball Digest: “Anyone … who loves baseball should pick up a copy of Fifty Nine in ’84, Edward Achorn‘s well-researched and highly readable account of Radbourn‘s historic year … An engrossing trip back to those days, warts and all.”

Providence Journal: “I have never read a baseball book I enjoyed more, and I’ve read a lot of them. … If you’re a baseball fan, you owe it to yourself to read this one.”

Baseball America: “There’s certainly enough conflict, drama, and romance to make a great movie. They won’t even need a Hollywood ending. Radbourn provided it himself.”

Weekly Standard: “Pitch perfect … Compelling read … Edward Achorn has done a marvelous job of bringing together not just a ballplayer and his lover, but a time and a game, a city and its people, and the stories of all the Providence Grays, one of whom wound up recording the ‘greatest season a pitcher ever had.’”

Bill Littlefield, Only a Game (NPR): “Edward Achorn’s Fifty-nine in ’84 goes well beyond [Radbourn’s] preposterous numbers. He has a wonderful time bringing to life Providence, the city where Radbourn was pitching in 1884. He gives us Radbourn’s teammates, at least one of whom hated him. He introduces us to Carrie Stanhope, the woman Old Hoss apparently loved and finally married, just before syphilis killed him.”

David M. Shribman, Bloomberg News: “This season’s most unexpected volume … a portrait of baseball when the grass was green and the players’ palms were red (no gloves in those days) — a magical world of heroes and cranks and a woman known as Mrs. Stanhope, who presided over a boarding house and dominated the dreams of Charles Radbourn.”

Charleston Courier and Post: “Fifty-Nine in ’84 is that rare ore strike, taking remarkably colorful Providence Grays pitcher Charles ‘Old Hoss’ Radbourn and his amazing 59 victories during the 1884 season out of a treasure box in baseball’s attic.”

Cape Cod Today: “Fifty-nine in ’84 is a stirring, enjoyable read that I couldn’t put down. If you like baseball, you’ll love this book.”

Kathleen A. Powers, Boston Globe: “Achorn has dug deep into newspaper files and other archives, including marvelous photographic collections, to give us a raw and rude picture of baseball’s Old Testament era. He also shows us a vanished America … when sports writing was high-flown and fistic. He is generous with oddities of material detail and ways of life, including stories of atrocious sportsmanship on the part of players and perfidy on that of umpires — who justly feared for their lives.”

Milwaukee Journal: “Achorn doesn’t let those stunning stats get in the way of the bigger, and better, story: of a remarkable player and person (Radbourn, among his many accomplishments, also apparently was the first person ever to be photographed giving a one-finger salute), and a remarkable time in the game’s history. Thanks to relentless reporting and a straightforward writing style, both come alive.”

Publishers Weekly: “There’s plenty to devour (and learn) for even the biggest of baseball savants … Achorn wonderfully captures this era.”

Library Journal: “Hugely appealing for baseball die-hards … not just a recitation of bare-handed baseball and old-time brawling, but a story that, with its larger-than-life protagonist, numerous exploits, and a love interest, reads like a novel.”

BusinessWeek online: “Incredibly this reviewer could not put this page-turner down even while watching the Super Bowl on television. Even the goal line stand of the Colts on their one yard line wasn’t as exciting as the drama of Old Hoss Radbourn and his Providence Grays battling it out.”

New York Post: “Required reading … Imagine the kind of money Charles ‘Old Hoss’ Radbourn would be pulling in today … Achorn shows us the brutal, bloody, woolly, no-holds-barred baseball of a different era.”

Twitter legend @oldhossradbourn: “Achorn writes vividly, and a great strength of the book is that one is near transported to the time in question. I felt as if I were once again walking through those dense, crowded streets on the way to the ball park or, in my off time, a house of ill repute. Achorn has clearly studied his subject matter well, and knows the ins and outs of his geography as if he’d strolled these boulevards himself. To his great credit, he equally treats the bad and the good, and his picture is often not pretty: coal-powered cities teem with fetid smog; rivers clogged with sewage wend their way through the landscape; and the questionable morals and illicit activities of the players and citizenry are omnipresent.”

Days before the big holiday, she was in the family room one evening, calmly looking out of the window and languidly cleaning herself, when a neighbor set off fireworks. The loud boom and harsh crackle drove her off her perch like a blast from a water cannon, and she shot up the stairs faster than a bottle rocket.

When another round of booming commenced, Diamond tore down the stairs and hid behind some boxes in the basement. She did not want to come out for hours.

As the week went on, with steadily more fireworks each night, she began nervously scratching her chin, until she had opened a wound.

Often she prowls around outside the house, faithfully returning each evening at about 8 p.m. She likes to sleep at the end of the bed, usually in a ball slumped against my feet, even though she risks getting clomped in the head when I turn over in my sleep.

We had intended to get her in early on the big night, but on the afternoon of July 4 she disappeared. Night came on, and sporadic explosions were followed by steadier and steadier activity, until an astonishing cacophony began. Low thump-thump-thumps, booms, crackles, shrieking missiles, a rat-a-tat noise as if from a distant automatic rifle, and high-pitched explosions filled the air like a prickly, solid wall of noise, for hours.

It sounded like the Tet Offensive. Well after midnight, it continued, pretty much eliminating the idea of sleep for those of us who had to get up early the next morning for work.

At 1:30 a.m. or so, it let up a bit. The booms came slower now. Still no cat.

Sap that I am, I slept downstairs on the couch in case she should scratch at the screen trying to get in. I really did not need this aggravation of waiting up for a family member who had broken curfew, especially as a father now onto his third teenager, but that’s life.

Around 3 a.m., I woke up, opened the front door and Diamond scurried in, looking half-panicked and half-relieved.

That was a common experience this year around Rhode Island, which chose two years ago to honor the freedom our founders bequeathed us by making some fireworks legal.

Those who think the legalization of drugs will not increase their use might want to consult the effect of this minor change. Though the relaxed law only permitted such items as sparklers and other low-to-the-ground devices — party poppers, ground spinners and toy smoke makers — it just about opened the Gates of Hell.

Rippling rockets, with starbursts above roof tops and deafening explosions — all technically illegal — have become de rigueur in the local private fireworks community, and vastly more prevalent, in my opinion, than two years ago. Not being a devotee, I have no idea whether they were purchased from the fireworks tents that popped up all around the state, by the side of the road or in the parking lots of convenience stores, about a week before the holiday.

Residents complained of property damage — singe holes in their canopies and outdoor carpets, paper from spent firecrackers littering the neighborhood, even fire risks, as when one rocket-like explosive reportedly toppled over and blasted into a neighbor’s basement, igniting a basket, and another reportedly set someone’s deck on fire.

Around the state, Rhode Islanders reported to police that their pets were traumatized, their quality of life was spoiled, and they had to cower indoors until the explosions had abated. Someone groused to me that Rhode Island regulates everything that should not be regulated, and fails to regulate everything that should.

Well, that is life in the Land of the Free. Freedom is often extended, even if its crucial companion — personal responsibility and respect for the rights of others — is rarely taught.

On the other hand, as somebody who has done a fair amount of historical research, I can assure you this craziness is a treasured part of America’s cultural heritage, and goes way, way back. In the 19th Century, many people hid in their shuttered homes on July 4, often to avoid not just fireworks, but wayward bullets from the guns of patriotic drunks.

Yes, Rhode Islanders’ blasting and bombing can be dangerous and annoying, especially when it goes on long into the night. Fortunately, the barrage mostly seems to go away after about a week. Even if it does scare the cat half to death.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Journal’s deputy editorial pages editor.

Though far from swelled-headed, he was proud of the hard work that he and his colleague, Mike Tamburro, had done, and the risks they had run. They rescued a franchise that, in 1977, was bankrupt and had been deprived of membership in professional baseball. McCoy seemed doomed for the wrecking ball.

For the next 34 years, Messrs. Mondor and Tamburro toiled day and night to transform one of minor-league baseball’s worst franchises into one of its jewels. It went from drawing 70,000 paying customers in 1977, to more than 600,000 a year for six straight seasons, from 2004 to 2009.

But Ben, who died in 2010, was more than a great baseball entrepreneur. He loved his community and gave back to it generously. He was even more generous with his spirit, making everyone who came in contact with him feel special — even though, after he came to know you, he was always sure to deliver a well-aimed zinger or two.

He threw a launch party for my baseball book “Fifty-nine in ’84” in the Pawtucket Red Sox clubhouse on his last birthday, his 85th — revealing to no one it was his birthday until he stood up to speak that night. He flew up specially from sunny Florida, in less than spectacular health, on a March day, to host the event. He barked to the bookish crowd assembled that they had never come out to his ballpark before that night, getting lots of laughter and pained objections.

Everyone there adored him. I’ll never forget his beaming smile that night.

So I was honored to receive an invitation to attend the dedication of a bronze statue of the late owner, there outside the park, close to where he greeted fans, in a flowery strip now called Mondor Gardens.

“He was a special guy. He had a special impact on this state and touched a lot of lives and we wanted to honor that forever,” said PawSox President Tamburro, who joined Ben’s gracious widow, Madeleine, in unveiling the piece.

Many in the PawSox family — and it truly does seem like a family — helped celebrate the occasion, including ex-players John Tudor, Lou Merloni, Mike Rourke, Tommy Harper, Rico Petrocelli, former manager Joe Morgan and Red Sox senior adviser Jeremy Kapstein. The love for Mr. Mondor was visible on every smiling face.

The statue, the work of Carol “Tayo” Heuser, of Narragansett, is a fitting tribute to the man, beautifully and even brilliantly rendered. Ms. Heuser, who knew and greatly admired Mr. Mondor, wonderfully captured both Mr. Mondor’s warmth and strength, showing him smiling that unforgettable smile, wearing his PawSox jacket and holding a bat.

At six feet, the statue is a little taller and thinner than the real article, but it was never intended to be a literal representation. As a symbolic expression of Ben’s spirit, it could not be improved.

Those who knew Mr. Mondor knew that smile often presaged a devilish remark, usually delivered with affection, though not always.

“The likeness is remarkable,” Mr. Tamburro said, adding with a laugh: “You feel he’s about to give us hell.”

Mr. Mondor adamantly insisted that his admirers refrain from making any effort to rename Mc-Coy Stadium as Mondor Field or the like.

Mr. Tamburro was not sure Mr. Mondor even wanted the statue, and joked that the blackening clouds over the ceremony, signifying the approach of a thunderous late-afternoon storm, might indicate the late owner’s true feelings, as he looked down from the glowering heavens.

If so, the statue seemed to (barely) gain Ben’s blessing. The rain held off until the ceremony had been completed, then fell in sheets.

Yes, he was only a baseball franchise owner. But Ben Mondor’s wonderful life ran against the grain of a society that seems at times to be losing its way.

He gave more than he took. He created. He ran a business that provides jobs. Because of the work he did, countless families have spent many lovely hours together, enjoying a beautiful game, the best one that humans have yet invented, in my opinion.

It’s easy to get cynical about professional baseball in our days of self-centered multi-millionaires who seem to know or care little about the game’s rich history or the special way fans feel about it.

Though Ben Mondor made a good living off it, he realized baseball was more than a way to drain money as swiftly as possible from spectators and advertisers, looting its legacy and its future.

At the foot of his statue is something he liked to say about his business: “We are blessed to make our living playing a little boy’s game on freshly cut grass under God’s blue sky.”

Amen, Ben, amen.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Providence Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor.

The ideas the Founders advanced were radical and controversial, then and now, in a world governed largely by self-worshipping authorities and unaccountable power, yet they were neither utopian nor impractical. To the contrary, more than two centuries have proved them remarkably practical — that when people have the liberty to make decisions for themselves and free choices in the marketplace, great things happen. Society becomes much more just, wealth expands and individuals have vastly greater opportunities to pursue their dreams.

Each generation, it seems, must fight anew for these principles if they wish them to survive. But since the age of the Founders, no one ever did it better, or with greater consequence, than Abraham Lincoln. The Declaration was the centerpiece of his political philosophy, and sustained him, and America, through our cataclysmic Civil War and the eradication of the evil institution of slavery.

A speech Lincoln made on Aug. 17, 1858, during the U.S. Senate campaign that he lost against Democrat Stephen Douglas, is representative of his thought. He delivered it in the sleepy central Illinois town of Lewistown, still sleepy when I visited it last June, en route from Bloomington, Ill. (home of baseball pitcher Old Hoss Radbourn, subject of my last book), to St. Louis, Mo. (scene of my next). I saw the modest brick house where Lincoln stayed, which last summer had an old refrigerator on its unkempt front porch.

Lincoln argued to the crowd at Declaration represented colonies that permitted slavery. Yet the Founders planted seeds for slavery’s death in the end of constitutional protection of slave importation as of 1808 and, more powerfully, in the Declaration itself.

America’s Founders, Lincoln observed, “said to the whole world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man.

“In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.

“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths,” to protect people in future days when they might suffer under a government that forced its will on them for the benefit of economic and political interests, oppressing or stealing the labor of some to make others rich or powerful.

They knew “their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began — so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.”

I suppose that sounds hopelessly old-fashioned to today’s Americans, many of whom seem far more interested in TV shows or getting the better of their fellow humans than the founding principles. But Lincoln spent his life entreating citizens to think about them, even after the Supreme Court despicably ruled against such values in its Dred Scott decision.

“Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me . . . but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.”

Liberty in a civil society was at the center of the Founders’ ideas, and Lincoln’s.

Lincoln insisted that, while he was not indifferent to worldly honors, “I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of American Independence.”

Wise words, then and now.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor.

Two years ago, then-Gov. Donald Carcieri, a Republican, and the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, acting on reckless legislation without proper controls passed by the Democrat-dominated General Assembly, decided to gamble an enormous amount of taxpayer money on a baseball star’s dream of running a company that designs really cool video games.

Though you and I have been put on the hook for still unknown millions of dollars in loans, our leaders still refused last week to fully inform us about the status of “our” investment. Governor Chafee did concede that it was “fair to say” that 38 Studios, run by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, was looking for even more help from us after having defaulted on its agreement with Rhode Island, missing a $1.1 million payment due May 1. After that, it laid off all its employees.

Wonderful.

Many of us without weighty experience in finance — including then-candidate Chafee — knew two years ago that this was an awful idea. The Boston area is crawling with private venture capitalists, but none thought that such a gamble on 38 Studios was prudent. Seven other states, including Massachusetts, also took a pass.

Yet Rhode Island insiders, the suckers of America, stormed ahead, before the public had a chance to fully vet the plan. The EDC, whose members include such political luminaries as AFL-CIO President George Nee, voted 8-1 for this disaster. A handful of insiders knew of the scheme for months, but kept it secret from those of us who would pay the bills — worried that another state or a Canadian city would outbid them for 38 Studios. (If only we could have been so lucky!)

The buzzwords-filled arguments were the usual: that government better understands how to incubate business than the private sector. By luring Mr. Schilling to downtown Providence, we would supposedly attract all sorts of innovative companies.

“It was about establishing the company as a catalyst for a broader digital-media cluster in Rhode Island. As an anchor tenant, 38 Studios will be a magnet for other related businesses that will set up shop here and generate thousands of additional jobs in our state,” wrote then-EDC Executive Director Keith Stokes.

Mr. Stokes, forced out this month, sure seemed to get that wrong. But we often hear from government officials that their brilliant “investments” of taxpayer dollars will reap great returns.

Many of us remember how President Obama’s Energy Department proceeded, in defiance of numerous red flags, with throwing a $535 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan at Solyndra, a solar-panel maker with a very bad business plan.

The Obama administration brazenly ignored the company’s non-investment-grade rating by Fitch, and rubber-stamped its approval in March 2009 as part of the celebrated stimulus. It promised this “investment” would create 4,000 jobs.

Exploiting the scheme, President Obama paid a showy visit to the plant, calling Solyndra “a testimonial to American ingenuity and dynamism.” He did not mention what an audit two months earlier by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP had found: “The Company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Needless to say, this testament to ingenuity and dynamism went under, throwing 1,100 employees onto the street, and leaving you and me with the bill for the loans.

Politicians from both parties love to spin the roulette wheel, betting our money, in the name of “creating jobs.”

In practice, such crony capitalism fails repeatedly . Politicians don’t understand technology very well. They tend to use taxpayer funds corruptly, to cozy up to celebrities or reward campaign supporters. It’s human nature that people spend someone else’s money much less prudently than they would spend their own.

It is through the marketplace, through millions of investors making millions of complex decisions with their own money, that ideas and innovations get tested the most rationally and efficiently.

Instead of blowing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars backing risky ventures, Rhode Island would do vastly better by creating an environment where business innovation could flourish. We know how to do that. Dramatically scale back regulations that pointlessly hamper business. Make our taxes competitive. Provide an infrastructure for growth — with good public schools, ports, highways, public transportation.

Some people say that the odds are better of 38 Studios’ hitting the video-game jackpot than Rhode Island undertaking commonsense reforms.

But we can always dream.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor.

There’s so much to love.

There’s even a movement afoot to try to improve the economy by decreasing the public’s negative feelings about Rhode Island.

Well, I guess that positive vibes are a good thing.

But I’m not sure that Rhode Island will benefit by trying to stifle “negativity.” It’s pretty much the same thing as trying to stifle honesty, hoping that a happy-face sticker will make everyone feel better.

It’s not going to work.

Rhode Island, for all its charms, does have serious problems. They will not go away by wishing them away. These problems have been brought upon us by a ruling class that, for decades, chose to turn the state into a treasure chest to be raided by politically connected special interests.

To some extent, such practices are the very nature of politics. There is no utopia — not in any of the states.

But in Rhode Island, this tendency has been exacerbated by two serious problems: the absence of two competitive parties; and a civic culture of learned helplessness, a willingness by the voting public to put up with just about any degree of corruption.

The best defense against public corruption, by far, is the fear implanted in politicians that they might lose the next election if they step out of line. There is no such fear in Rhode Island.

Largely left unchallenged, the ruling class has been able to build up enormous advantages, even in a system governed by theoretically fair elections.

Leaders raise enormous amounts of money from special interests that benefit from their decisions.

Consider Sen. Dominick Ruggerio (D.-North Providence). He raised some eyebrows with his ethically dubious hiring of Stephen Iannazzi, the son of the union leader who hired his son — paying Mr. Iannazzi, a college dropout in his mid-20s, $88,112 a year.

Then the senator traveled to Buenos Aires for a luxurious stay at a five-star hotel on the dime of a shadowy group that introduces lawmakers to lobbyists. In Barrington this year, police said the senator was driving around in a highly intoxicated state, but a judge accepted his guilty plea to refusing to accept a Breathalyzer test, and the DUI charge was dropped.

Needless to say, the good senator faces no opposition for reelection. He collected more than $55,000 in contributions for the first quarter of the year, leaving him with $52,522 in his campaign fund, according to GoLo  calProv.com  .

In a system controlled by one party, politicians can readily use redistricting to make it as hard as possible for potential challengers to run — in some cases, shifting the street of an opponent’s house right out of the district.

On top of that, Rhode Island is one of a minority of states that still permit a “master lever” on the ballot — the ability to vote for all the candidates from one party with the single stroke of a pencil. That obviously gives the dominant party a big advantage.

All these contribute to make it very difficult to have fair and competitive elections.

It is not negative to point these things out. It is the truth.

Rhode Island has suffered under this approach. Our state faces crushing retiree costs, because of unsustainable favors granted public-employee unions. Our property taxes are through the roof, our public schools are outperformed by those of other states where taxpayers spend less, our unemployment rate is nearly the worst in America, and our small businesses are withering.

Yes, that sounds “negative.”

But one does not have to respond to negativity by giving up, or pretending Rhode Island is fine and dandy.

One can support candidates, even against long odds, who would try to move the state more in the direction of the common good. One can speak out for policies that would help small businesses grow: simpler and more realistic regulations, and more competitive fees and taxes.

It is possible to change Rhode Island. But only by confronting reality.

Indeed, one of the remarkably positive things that has happened to the state in recent years is the leadership of Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Taveras, liberal Democrats who have recognized the financial dangers we face and have fought courageously for reform.

It’s hard work, to be sure, but such honest efforts are the only real way to get Rhode Island out of its funk. Then the positives of the Ocean State can really shine.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor.

Which made a statement by a firefighter at last week’s City Council meeting rather staggering. In a packed, emotionally charged session, the council was preparing to vote, 12 to 0, to approve a pension reform that is expected to cut Providence’s structural deficit by nearly $19 million next year.

“Can you tell us what the rush is?” firefighter Wayne Oliveira shouted at the council.

What the rush is? Is he truly unaware of Providence’s impending bankruptcy?

At the same meeting, union members carried on as if the politicians wanted to pick on city pensioners for no reason, in freezing their so-called “cost-of-living” adjustments, some on the order of 5 or 6 percent a year.

They bore gratuitously insulting signs, like this one: “To the widows of those killed, thank you for your service. Now give us back your COLA.”

They crowded around council members at the end of the meeting, and shouted at them as they left.

Clarence Gough, vice president of the local police union, denounced the council for holding its first vote on the night of the wake for Sgt. Maxwell Dorley, who died April19 in a crash while responding to a police call.

“I’m an angry black man with a gun,” he said. “It was absolutely disrespectful to Max Dorley’s family and to the brothers and sisters on this force.”

He later apologized, but only for the gun reference.

While union leaders attacked council members for trying to deal with the reality of unsustainable pensions, an outsider with no skin in the game — Standard & Poor’s Rating Services — weighed in with its own analysis of Providence’s financial condition. It lowered its long-term rating on Providence’s general obligation debt from BBB+ to BBB, based on the city’s “deteriorating fund balance and liquidity position, intractable pension liability growth, and optimistic 2013 budget projections.”

It added: “The city’s budget remains structurally imbalanced, and it is uncertain at this time whether such savings will be realized and sufficient to close the budget gap.”

In other words, this is deadly serious, and Providence is not out of the woods yet, by a long shot. Pension reform is not some sick game to show disrespect to the family of an officer who bravely died in the line of duty — as if anyone in public life would wish to do such a thing.

Up on Smith Hill, too, the public-employee unions were pretending that Rhode Island faces no financial catastrophe.

Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio, Senate Majority Whip Maryellen Goodwin and other Democrats pushed a special-interest bill to reverse COLA adjustments for many government retirees.

The idea is supposedly to protect the COLAs of poorer retirees. But Treasurer Gina Raimondo, who worked tirelessly to push through pension sustainability last year, warned strenuously against tugging out the threads of the reform, lest the whole thing come apart.

Were some retirees exempted from the freeze, others would have to wait even longer before their COLAs could be resumed. And the bill could return COLAs to some very comfortable, high-earning retirees, whose income from other sources would not be counted, she noted.

Meanwhile, Rep. Scott Guthrie, a Democrat and former North Kingstown firefighter who is receiving a tax-free disability pension, pushed a measure that Dan Beardsley, executive director of the Rhode League of Cities and Towns, warned would block efforts by some municipalities to get current or future retirees out of the state-run pension system into other types of retirement plans, including IRAs, 457s and 401(k)s.

Mr. Guthrie, the reader might recall, filed a bill earlier this year to prohibit lawyers working on any labor contract from charging cities and towns legal fees in an amount greater than 0.2 percent of the value of the contract — an apparent effort to unilaterally disarm cities and towns if unions drag out contract negotiations.

The special interests and politicians who support them want to act as if they don’t get it, but most Rhode Islanders now do. It’s no longer politics; it comes down to math.

The system that was set up here for decades is not sustainable, and devastating financial consequences await our state and communities –– indeed, all of us — if we try to ignore it.

Edward Achorn (eachorn@providencejournal.com) is The Journal’s deputy editorial pages editor.