Product Description

Greedy owners, spoiled players, disillusioned fans -- all hallmarks of baseball in the 'nineties. Only in this case, it's the 1890s. We may think that business interests dominate the sport today, but baseball's early years were an even harsher and less sentimental age, when teams were wrenched from their cities, owners colluded and the ballplayers held out, and the National League nearly turned itself into an out-and-out cartel. Where They Ain't tells the story of that tumultuous time, through the prism of the era's best team, the legendary Baltimore Orioles, and its best hitter, Wee Willie Keeler, whose motto "Keep your eye clear, and hit 'em where they ain't" was wise counsel for an underdog in a big man's world.

Under the tutelage of manager Ned Hanlon, the Orioles perfected a style of play known as "scientific baseball," featuring such innovations as the sacrifice bunt, the hit-and-run, the squeeze play, and the infamous Baltimore chop. The team won three straight pennants from 1894 to 1896 and played the game with snap and ginger. Burr Solomon introduces us to Keeler and his colorful teammates, the men who reinvented baseball -- the fierce third baseman John McGraw, the avuncular catcher Wilbert Robinson, the spunky shortstop Hughey Jennings, and the heartthrob outfielder Joe Kelley, who carried a comb and mirror in his hip pocket to groom himself between batters.

But championships and color were not enough for the barons of baseball, who began to consolidate team ownership for the sake of monopoly profits. In 1899, the Orioles' owners entered into a "syndicate" agreement with the ambitious men who ran the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers -- with disastrous results. The Orioles were destroyed (and the franchise folded), the city of Baltimore was relegated to minor-league status just when the city's industries were being swallowed up by national monopolies, and even Willie Keeler, a joyful innocent who wanted only to play ball, ultimately sold out as well. In Solomon's hands, the story of the Orioles' demise is a page-turning tale of shifting alliances, broken promises, and backstage maneuvering by Tammany Hall and the Brooklyn and Baltimore political machines on a scale almost unimaginable today.

Out of this nefarious brew was born the American League, the World Series, and what we know as "modern baseball," but innocence was irretrievably lost. The fans of Baltimore, in fact, would have to wait more than half a century for the major leagues to return. Where They Ain't lays bare the all-too-human origins of our national game and offers a cautionary tale of the pastime at a century's end.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1465072 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it" is one of those perfect axioms that begs the question, When is baseball gonna finally remember and get it right? Subtitled "The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball," Solomon's splendidly energetic examination of one of the sport's most powerful and storied franchises stands as a fascinating--and cautionary--study of how a team, regardless of quality, can simply implode. And what a team the Orioles of the 1890s was: manager Ned Hanlon and stars Wee Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Hugh Jennings, Wilbert Robinson, Dan Brouthers, Iron Man McGinnity, and Joe Kelley all deserve their plaques in Cooperstown. As a unit, they created "scientific baseball," redefining the way the game was played and dominating the National League. Yet, by 1903, to Baltimore's horror and confusion, there were no more Orioles. A series of self-destructive choices successfully conspired to export their best players to Brooklyn and remove the franchise--now a member of the American League and playing in New York as the Highlanders--from the Major League standings for nearly half a century.

A fine reporter and writer, Solomon does a remarkable job of bringing the past into the present, exploring how little has changed in terms of baseball business and organizational stupidity through the years. With its marvelous cast of real--and fully realized--characters, Where They Ain't reads as much like a novel as it does like history, and though we know how it ends, it remains an important story worth telling, learning from, and certainly remembering. --Jeff Silverman

From Kirkus Reviews
The more things change, the more they remain the same in the world of baseballthats the lesson that emerges from this exemplary look at the game of a century ago. Baseball was a mess then, too: players' salaries were skyrocketing, cheating and hooliganism ran rampant, owners pondered schemes to ``protect'' the game (mainly from themselves). No team was safe; even the reigning world champion was dismantled, with the pieces going to the highest bidders. Solomon's crackerjack account chronicles the games coming of age, both for better and for worse, through the story of the National League's Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s1900s. The archetype for modern baseball, a team built on speed, fielding, and smarts, the Orioles were powered by a core of future Hall of Famers that included ``Wee Willie Keeler (whose hitting mantra isi evoked in the book's title) and hot-tempered John McGraw, later a great innovator in his own right. They executed revolutionary plays: the ``Baltimore chop'' (hitting a ball downward and running out the hop) and the hit-and-run, to this day a strategic mainstay that was devised by manager Ned Hanlon. Beloved by Baltimore, the Orioles stitched together a run of campaigns that earned them the mantle ``the greatest team ever'' from writers of the day. About the only thing that could sink this juggernaut was a greedy owner, who came in the guise of Harry von der Horst, a profligate brewing scion with a huge ego and legal bills to match. Like his counterparts, Harry loathed the idea of paying salaries commensurate with players' performance. Long story made short, he and the other owners tried several schemes to keep salaries in check and control the game, including syndicate ownership (simultaneous ownership of more than one team by a single ownership group). The result of this was the merging of Brooklyn's nine with the Orioles, with the southern team serving as a virtual farm club. The inevitable losers in all this, naturally, were the fans. Baltimore soon folded its National League tent. A club in the upstart American League took its place, only to move a few years later to New York, where they eventually became the Yankees. An outstanding blend of lore, social history, and canny insight, redolent with detail and the language of the day. Tonic, albeit a bitter one, for fans who think baseball today is at its nadir. (Radio satelite tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
...a solidly researched and highly engrossing account of baseball's beginnings. -- The New York Times Book Review, Diane Cole

John Feinstein author of A Good Walk Spoiled and A Season on the Brink Where They Ain't is a good read if you are an old baseball fan, if you are a young baseball fan, or if you are neither. It's lots of fun. -- Review

Mr. Solomon ... relates this wonderful story in elegant style and with a particular flair for setting the fin-de-siècle scene. -- The Wall Street Journal, Richard J. Tofel

Customer Reviews

Bud Selig's Playbook
I used to avoid books about 19th century baseball, fearing that I'd find the game too unfamiliar to the one I grew up with. The rules were often different, the style of play was different, and you couldn't watch it on ESPN Classic.

"Where They Ain't", however, is one of the better baseball books I've read. Ostensibly about the old Baltimore Orioles of the National League in the 1890s, this book is really a micro-history of early baseball, tracing the game forward -- both on and off the field -- through the advent of Babe Ruth. Burt Solomon paints a very convincing picture of those Orioles as the team that had the singlemost impact on the way the game is played today. He chronicles the playing and early mangerial days of John McGraw, Ned Hanlon, Wilbert Robinson and Willie Keeler, and shows how they introduced the aggressive style of play -- the hit-and-run, the double-steal, the drag bunt, the Baltimore chop -- that still wins pennants today.

But more than profiling that now-defunct team, Solomon paints a vivid picture of the economics of the game at large. Playing in ornate wood stadiums, a team would be lucky to draw 5,000 fans (or "cranks", in the parlace of the time) to the grandstands and "bleacheries". The owners fiddled mercilessly with cost-cutting ideas such as contraction, team syndicates, and collusion. Indeed, that these ideas all failed so miserably (forging the birth of the rival American League, a revolution which swallowed its own children so rapidly that within three years you couldn't tell one league from the other) that your eyebrows will leap off your head when you see that today's owners are still using them! Certainly fans of the Minnesota Twins, Montreal Expos, and Baltimore Orioles (we've come full circle) will wince in agony as the old Oriole team was destroyed by league management three times in four years -- by ill-advised co-ownership with the Brooklyn Dodgers; by contraction out of the NL; and then by relocation to New York.

Solomon writes in a rich prose style, and footnotes his research extensively. It must have been fun poring through old newspaper accounts for the colorful game descriptions he ultimately finds. He subtly introduces us to historical changes, such as the three-strike out and the foot-long pitcher's rubber, with a broad "that will never catch on!" wink to the reader. My chief complaints would be that "Where They Ain't" is a slow read -- and one so entrenched in Baltimore geography that it's unfathomable that a map wasn't printed inside the book. I lived in Baltimore for parts of six years and even I frequently got lost in Solomon's directions.

American Social History
Baseball hasn't changed much over the past 100 years. Players and owners still wrangle with one another with the latter claiming the former are overpayed. This is more than the story of the Orioles of the 1890's. It is also about the beginning of the success of the Dodgers and Giants and the beginning of the New York Yankees when the Baltimore franchise was moved to New York in 1903 to become the Highlanders. Rich colorful characters such as Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Joe Kelley, Hughie Jennings, and others populate this book when you played with injuries because you were encouraged to "take it like an old Oriole." Baseball historian Fred Lieb wrote a book entitled "The Baltimore Orioles" many years back about this subject, and it is with a great deal of thanks that I express to both him and Burt Solomon, the author of "Where They Ain't" for bringing American social history alive for us to enjoy. There is more to American history than wars, treaties, and presidents. Run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and buy this book. You can thank me later. This book is an easy five stars.

It's always been a business
It's tempting to think that baseball has become a business only in the last 25 years or so. This wonderful book shows that even 100 years ago baseball was all business (frequently in a cutthroat way). Imagine if Steinbrenner or Turner owned several teams and switched the best players back and forth. Sounds crazy, right? That's exactly what "Syndicate Baseball" of the late 1800's was. The Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas were owned by the same beer baron. Many of the Orioles best players (including 3 of the big 4) featured in Where They Ain't were transferred to Brooklyn. The same fate befell the Cleveland Spiders when all of their quality players were shipped to St. Louis in 1899. This book is populated by historical baseballers (Keeler, Kelley, Hanlon, McGraw) and scoundrels (the National League owners, especially Andrew Freedman). For the baseball fan who yearns for "the good old days" this is a must read.