Spitball reviews ‘convincing and engaging’ Fifty-nine in ’84
Mike Shannon, in Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, praises Edward Achorn’s Fifty-nine in ’84 for bringing the “crusty, tenacious, rubber-armed” Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn back to life. “As Achorn makes clear, Radbourn is definitely a player who has earned his place in any baseball fan’s pantheon of all-time greats,” Shannon writes, calling the detailed work “as complete a biography of the man as we are ever likely to get.”
The review notes that Achorn “expertly delineates” the rough and rowdy world of baseball in 1884, played under different rules and conditions. Subplots, especially the story of Radbourn’s bitter battle for glory against younger teammate Charles Sweeney, keep the story compelling. The reviewer lauded the way Achorn fleshed out Radbourn’s personality. “Direct quotes attributed to him in the book are few and far between, and it is a tribute to Achorn that we come away feeling that we know his subject as well as we do, with the great pitcher having left so much unsaid for posterity.”
