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Thank you, Benjamin Medbery (1759-1778)
I rode my bike Sunday afternoon, August 29, 2010, out to Latham Park in Barrington, Rhode Island, five minutes from home, to watch the fabulously expensive yachts and lesser stinkpots pour in and out of the marina-lined cove to sparkling Narrangsett Bay. It was a beautiful sight on a hot, breezy late summer afternoon under a bright sun and deep blue skies.
On the way back, I decided to stop by a lonely little cemetery — a stone’s throw from my new home, but one I had never investigated. It is quiet little place — mostly sunburned grass, with about two...
Washington Post hails Fifty-nine in ’84 as ‘an astonishing book’
In a glowing review, The Washington Post describes Fifty-nine in ’84 as “an astonishing book about 19th-century baseball.”
Reviewer Sean Callahan writes: “Fifty-nine in ’84 is a romantic book, equal parts heroic quest, tragic tale and doomed love story.”
Callahan notes that Achorn explores Radbourn’s heroic performance of winning 59 games in a single season, as well as his whiskey-guzzling ways — and his notoriety as perhaps the first man in history captured on camera flashing the middle finger.
“The tragedy of Radbourn’s heroics was that, once that season ended, he never possessed the same dominance again,” Callahan adds.
“Off the field, however, Radbourn’s...
Boston Herald praises ‘wonderfully written book’
Steve Buckley, baseball guru of the Boston Herald, warmly praises “Fifty-nine in ’84” in a piece about the best baseball books under the sun.
“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.”
Buckley writes: “While we sometimes think of baseball played in those days as clean and tidy, the reality was something quite different. Baseball in those days was mean and it was dirty, and it was played by borderline desperados who were...
Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan ‘envious’ of Achorn for book idea!
Legendary Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan says “Fifty-nine in ’84” is one of the best reads of the summer.
“Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-nine in ’84’’ (Smithsonian) left me envious, as in “Why didn’t I do that?’’ writes Mr. Ryan in The Globe. “Mr. Achorn, the deputy editorial pages editor of the Providence Journal, tells the story of Charles “Hoss’’ Radbourn, who won a record 59 games for the Providence Grays in 1884. That victory total, you will not be surprised to learn, remains the record.”
“What makes his book work is that this is not solely a baseball story. It is a sort...
Hollywood goes for “Fifty-nine in ’84”
Kirker Butler, a co-executive producer and writer on Fox series “The Cleveland Show,” has optioned movie rights to Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had,” the Hollywood Reporter reveals.
“Butler said he’s not a baseball buff, just a fan of good stories and good characters. He sparked to the rambunctious Radbourn, who among other achievements is purported to be the first person in history to be photographed flipping the bird and who fell in love with a local madam to whom he pretended to be married,” the newspaper reported.
“The goal...
Rave reviews greet Fifty-nine in ’84
Washington Post: “An astonishing book … a romantic book, equal parts heroic quest, tragic tale and doomed love story.”
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...
Ball Four and Old Hoss
Old Hoss Radbourn gets an amusing mention — and a bit of a putdown — in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, one of the greatest baseball books ever written and a personal favorite of mine:
March 9
Tempe
Before the game today Rollie Sheldon was talking about old-timers. It’s a funny thing, but athletes have improved tremendously through the years in every sport where performance can be objectively measured – track and field, swimming, etc. Yet in other sports, especially boxing and baseball, there are always people who say the old-timers were better, even unmatched. I don’t believe that, and I...
Boston Globe: Fifty-nine in ’84 a top Father’s Day gift!
Boston Globe book critic Kathleen A. Powers says Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had” would be on her Father’s Day wish list if she were a dad.
She writes in The Sunday 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, a time when Providence and Boston were prosperous, pugnacious rivals, their games drawing fans from New Bedford, Fall River, and Worcester; a...
