Overview

Jerrold Casway's fascinating biography of legendary baseball player Ed Delahanty (1867-1903) offers a compelling examination of the first ""King of Swatsville's"" life and career, including the enigma surrounding his tragic and untimely death. Through Delahanty's story, Casway traces the evolving character of major league baseball and its effect on the lives and ambitions of its athletes. Delahanty's career spanned the last decades of the nineteenth century during a time when the sons of post-famine Irish refugees dominated the sport and changed the playing style of America's national pastime. In this ""Emerald Age"" of baseball, Irish-American players comprised 30-50 percent of all players, managers, and team captains. Baseball for Delahanty and other young Irishmen was a ticket out of poverty and into a life of fame and fortune. The allure and promise of celebrity and wealth, however, were disastrous for Delahanty. He found himself enmeshed in desperate contract dealings and a gambling addiction that drove him to alcohol abuse. The owner of the fourth highest lifetime batting average, Delahanty mysteriously disappeared and was found at the bottom of Niagara's Horseshoe Falls. This rich biography, which relies on previously unavailable family papers and court transcripts, as well as the colorful sports reporting of the period, will appeal to anyone interested in baseball, sports, or Irish history.

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9780268022914

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Reviews

Part history, part mystery, Casway's book offers fascinating insights into baseball at the turn of the century and the tragic death of one of its superstars. -Stan Hochman, Columnist, Philadelphia Daily News [I]n his fascinating and thoroughly researched book, Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball, Casway tells the story of a self-indulgent athlete who lived for the moment, and in the telling provides a concise history of the early Phillies during the game's transforming era. * Philadelphia Inquirer * Casway's important and highly original book represents many years of thorough and dedicated research, thoughtful analysis and interpretation, and the author's intense interest in his subject. -Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Loyola University Casway has written a fascinating, carefully researched biography of a long-neglected baseball hero that will appeal to scholars as well as general readers. Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the culture and evolution of the national pastime at the turn of the century. -History Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this is an informed and colorful account of the baseball career of one Ed Delahanty that succeeds in capturing the zeitgeist of the sport in late nineteenth-century America. Casway's narrative also provides occasional references to the backdrop of contemporary people and events that helped define this era of want and plenty during the formative years of professional baseball. -Thomas E. Hachey, University Professor of History and Executive Director, Center for Irish Programs, Boston College Sad and compelling . . . this is a lucid examination of the 'behind the scenes' complexities of the national pasttime. . . . This is not an uplifting story, but it is essential for understanding how difficulties in a fledgling sport led to the unfortunate downfall of a great athlete. -ForeWord The tragedy of Ed Delahanty, known in the 1890s and early 1900s as the King of Swat because of his hitting prowess, is fully explored in Jerrold Casway's excellent Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball. . . . Casway's biography is also a well-researched social history of Irish involvement in the national pastime. -Sacramento Bee . . . a staggering work by historian Jerrold Casway from 2004 that may be the most overlooked great baseball book in recent years. -Oakland Tribune, April 8, 2006 ... impressive and persuasive . . . Casway . . . shows us how baseball when it was evolving ... can help us better appreciate the joys and miseries of baseball today. -The Virginia Quarterly Review

[I]n his fascinating and thoroughly researched book, Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball, Casway tells the story of a self-indulgent athlete who lived for the moment, and in the telling provides a concise history of the early Phillies during the game's transforming era.--Philadelphia Inquirer

Casway's important and highly original book represents many years of thorough and dedicated research, thoughtful analysis and interpretation, and the author's intense interest in his subject.

Author Information

Jerrold Casway is professor of history and chair of the Social Sciences/Teacher Education Division at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. He specializes in early modern Irish history and nineteenth-century baseball.

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