Book Review:Cap Anson I

Book Review: Cap Anson 1: When Captaining a Team Meant Something: Leadership in Baseball's Early Years
By Howard W. Rosenberg
published by Tile Books
p. 394

If you don’t know the history of 19th century baseball you are unlikely to know just who Cap Anson was. The most simplified explanation is that Adrian Anson known through baseball as “Cap” was baseball’s first real superstar. However it is not this aspect of Cap Anson upon which Mr. Rosenberg expounds, but rather the role of Captain Anson who served as both player and captain/manager of Chicago’s National League team between the 1870s and 1890s.

Cap was a common enough nickname and it usually referred to a captain-manager something that baseball has not seen much of over the past 5 or 6 decades. Anson was among the longest tenured of these captains/player-managers to rule a team in the 18th Century and thus becomes the main focus of this book which centers not around his playing days but around the changing roles of captains, player-captain, bench manager, and managers.

In the early years of baseball the captain was the authority on the field, it was he and not a manager that set the line-ups, positioned the fielders, applied the strategy and decided everything that happened from the moment the team reached the ballpark. Outside the ballpark the manager, if there was one, was the absolute authority and largely filled the role of team secretary making it a very different job than that of a manager today.

Of course baseball was a very different game, teams rarely had more than 11-12 players, substitutions were illegal except for injury, most teams had 2-3 man rotations and players tended to be professional in name more so than in behavior. Managers and teams had different ideas on training, injuries, and even surveillance of players that they suspected would be out carousing and drinking all night.

That was changing to a degree and this book focuses on those changes as the role of captain evolved into that of player-manager and evolved into bench manager, coach and the basic roles that we understand today. What makes this book unique is twofold; it actually analyzes the changes from those moments in times when the evolution was occurring and it is largely done through research upon the writings of the handful of reporters who actually covered baseball at the time that baseball journalism was really in its infancy.

The journalistic tradition that we know today did not exist - it was a much more loosely organized, literary tradition where fictionalization and literary license often took precedence over the truth as we’d recognize it today. It makes research and fact finding a very slippery slope but one which Mr. Rosenberg seems to have mastered in trying to create a picture of a time that none of us would have remembered firsthand.

Some of his conclusions are certainly at odds with those of other historians including those of Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract but those conclusions are well researched and supported by quotes, columns and indisputable facts.

While that makes for a fascinating read it often is a bit difficult to read through and some sections seem a little convoluted or tangential to the main thrust of the book. Aside from this I found the book a very well done scholarly piece that will not appeal to all fans but will without question be a benchmark for this type of research to all fans who enjoy this kind of scholarly work.

Give this one 3 out of 4 possible balls to the fans who enjoy this kind of thing but only 1.5 out of four to the casual fan.

Our Rating System is based on a four ball system as follows:
One Ball: Average. It has something to say but is nothing special.
Two Balls: Something men usually have - also means its a cut above average, and worth reading/owning.
Three balls: Stands out from its peers and is highly recommended.
Four Balls: More than just what two men have when hanging out together, it means it is an exceptional book that truly earns a walk - straight to the local book store to get a copy.