Search results for ""author tim hornbaker""

You may have seen Eight Men Out or Field of Dreams, but you won’t really know the full story of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox scandal of 1919 without reading Tim Hornbaker’s book. “Haunting portrait of one of the game’s most controversial and complex figures”—David Nemec, author, Official Rules of BaseballConsidered by Ty Cobb as “the finest natural hitter in the history of the game,” “Shoeless Joe” Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career batting average of .356—which is still ranked third best all time—the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport’s history. That is, until the “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.While many have sympathized with Jackson’s ban from baseball (even though he hit .375 during the 1919 World Series), not much is truly known about this quiet slugger. Whether he participated in the throwing of the World Series or not, he is still considered one of the game’s best, and many have fought for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.From the author of Turning the Black Sox White (on Charles Comiskey) and War on the Basepaths (on Ty Cobb), Fall from Grace tells the story of the incredible life of Joseph Jefferson Jackson. From a mill boy to a baseball icon, author Tim Hornbaker breaks down the rise and fall of “Shoeless Joe,” giving an inside look during baseball’s Deadball Era, including Jackson’s personal point of view of the “Black Sox” scandal, which has never been covered before in this.

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Charles Albert “The Old Roman” Comiskey was a larger-than-life figure; a man who had precision in his speech and who could work a room with handshakes and smiles. While he has been vilified in film as a rotund cheapskate and the driving force, albeit unknowingly, behind the actions of the 1919 White Sox, who threw the World Series (nicknamed the “Black Sox” scandal), that statement is far from the truth. In his five decades involved in baseball, Comiskey loved the sport through and through. It was his passion, his life blood, and once he was able to combine his love for the game with his managerial skills, it was the complete package for him. There was no other alternative. He brought the White Sox to Chicago in 1900 and was a major influential force in running the American League from its inception. From changing the way the first base position was played, to spreading the concept of “small ball” as a manager, to incorporating the community in his team’s persona while he was an owner, Comiskey’s style and knowledge improved the overall standard for how baseball should be played. Through rigorous research from the National Archives, newspapers, and various other publications, Tim Hornbaker not only tells the full story of Comiskey’s incredible life and the sport at the time, but also debunks the “Black Sox” controversy, showing that Comiskey was not the reason that the Sox threw the 1919 World Series.

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