This is really not the story of liquor, but rather the story of the American Association, a professional baseball league that in the 1880's provided baseball with a rebirth after gambling scandals and a new paradigm for selling tickets.
Achorn has taken on the role of historian for early baseball with this book following his story of Old Hoss Radbourn and his 1984 - 59 win season. Here we get a broader look at an entire league that would provide major league baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, and Brooklyn Dodgers, but in 1883, the season they established themselves and their popularity it was because audacious owners like the quirky Chris Von Der Ahe in St Louis defied the tradition.
They reduced tickets to 25 cents, played on Sundays, and sold beer and whiskey in the stands. The old National League was aghast, as were the moralizers of the day, but for the working class this was the place to get away from the drudgery of work and the result was fun, excitement, and financial success.
Achorn introduces us to starts like Mullane, Stovey, Browning - giants in their time, prototypes of future superstars. He also shows us how dirty the game could be played, throwing at batters with impunity, taking advantage of having only one umpire to scan the entire field, spikes, brawls, and scuffed up balls, but he also shows us the classic tension of a pennant race, the exhaustion of the players at the end of the season, and the soaring and crashing hopes of fans.
It is baseball as we know it in the book, even if we might not have recognized all of it in the field with no gloves, motley uniforms, pitchers working entire games and often consecutive games. In sell outs fans sat in the outfield.
There is no judging of the talents of the men who played then in comparison to the players today, just as we cannot truly imagine what the statistics of Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez and other steroid monsters would have been without their chemical enhancement.
All we can do is look through Achorn's writing and enjoy a pennant race played 150 years ago. And it is still good theater.
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