Edward Achorn

David M. Shribman of Bloomberg News calls the acclaimed Fifty-nine in ’84 “this season’s most unexpected volume” and notes that author Edward Achorn paints “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.”

Shribman writes: “This season’s most unexpected volume is Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-nine in ‘84” (Smithsonian/Harper, $25.99), a title that sounds like a variation of the cry about the Oregon territory but is really the story of how Old Hoss Radbourn won 59 games (and then three more in a rudimentary World Series) for the Providence Grays in 1884, a season beyond the memory of anyone alive.

“Achorn’s hero was a man ‘determined in his quiet way to triumph over all the poseurs and pretenders’ of the early days of baseball, his story pieced together from private collections much ignored and newspapers long disappeared.

“Love Story

“… Achorn asks a most beguiling question [about Radbourn’s love for Carrie]: ‘Did he try to win the National League pennant itself to prove his worth to her?’”

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