514 pages
24 photographs
Chicago in the Roaring Twenties was a city of immigrants, mobsters, and flappers with one shared passion: the Chicago Cubs. It all began when the chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley decided to build the world’s greatest ball club in the nation’s Second City. In this Jazz Age center, the maverick Wrigley exploited the revolutionary technology of broadcasting to attract eager throngs of women to his renovated ballpark.
Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club transports us to this heady era of baseball history and introduces the team at its crazy heart—an amalgam of rakes, pranksters, schemers, and choirboys who take center stage in memorable successes, equally memorable disasters, and shadowy intrigue. Readers take front-row seats to meet Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Joe McCarthy, Lewis “Hack” Wilson, Gabby Hartnett. The cast of characters also includes their colorful if less-extolled teammates and the Cubs’ nemesis, Babe Ruth, who terminates the ambitions of Mr. Wrigley’s ball club with one emphatic swing.
Acknowledgments 000
1. The Capital of Baseball 000
2. Samples of Baseball 000
3. The Age of Wilson Begins 000
4. The McCarthymen Take the Stage 000
5. My Dad the Sportswriter 000
6. To Paradise and Back 000
7. "A Sort of Frenzy" 000
8. McCarthy's Debacle 000
9. "I Wanted Wilson" 000
10. The Prime of Mr. Hack Wilson 000
11. "A Lousy Outfield" 000
12. Room 509 000
13. Informants 000
14. "Nothing to It" 000
15. "No Particular Pal of Mine" 000
16. "That Story Is Terrible, Judge" 000
17. The Natural 000
18. "Mugs . . . Chiselers" 000
Notes 000
Additional Source Comments 000
Bibliography 000Index 000
