A Great Pitcher and Great Gentleman in a solid biography

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	• Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train Henry W. Thomas Bison Books, 1998 - 516 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This is a must read for Baseball fans

I have read most of the "greatest" baseball books and this is one of the best. This is obviously the writer's lifetime work, and he weaves Walter Johnson's life with his very personal belongings to create a masterpiece.

If you want to get a feel for what baseball was like at the turn of the century, then this will answer your questions. This is one of the only hardbacks that I will keep forever.

Oustanding biography of a great Hall of Fame pitcher

I will just one particular reason why I like this book. It will seem trivial to some readers, and I will not be surprised if this review gets negative recommendations because of it. After all, the author did not deliberately intend for this "selling point" to occur, but it did. What is it? Well, Henry Thomas is a stickler for names. He insists on calling teams and places what they were called at the time instead of what we refer to them today. The Washington ballpark is not referred to as Griffith Stadium until the early 20's. References are made to the Cleveland Naps and the New York Highlanders. where am I going with this? In the third chapter, Thomas explains how the owners of the Washington American League team decide to officially change the name of team from "Senators" to "Nationals" for good luck. The name did not catch on with fans, who still preferred to call them "Senators", although "Nats" (short for both seNATorS and NATionalS) was a common nickname. Still, Thomas consistently refers to Johnson's team as the "Nationals" since that was the franchise's official name until 1956.

This book was written in 1995. Although there were fans who dreamed major league baseball would eventually return to Washington, D.C., it still seemed like impossible for many people. But eventually, the Montr?al Expos WERE moved to Washington, and Thomas' choice of words proved prophetic. Commissioner Bud Selig wanted to rename the team the "Washington Senators" after the team he remembered in his youth. D.C. Mayor Tony Williams was adamantally opposed to "Senators" since D.C. had no voting representation in Congress---he wanted the team named "Washington Grays" after the champion Negro League team that used to play at Griffith Stadium. "Washington Nationals" was chosen as a compromise.

The result is that if you are sitting in the stands at RFK Stadium watching a Nats game (perhaps the home opener, as I was doing today) and you turn to read Thomas' biography of Walter Johnson and his "Nationals", you realize that the current team is part of a long tradition of Washington baseball, and it is a proud tradition. The proudest part of the history of Washington baseball was the career of Walter Johnson. This book reminds finds why.

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A Great Pitcher and Great Gentleman in a solid biography

The fact that Walter Johnson was the grandfather of the author does not disqualify this book as a legitimate biography. Since he didn't grow up around the "Big Train" Henry Thomas had to rely on meticulous research and perhaps his family connection gave him easier access to first-person accounts.

Walter Johnson had a freakish right arm. With an easy-going sidearm delivery he threw fastballs with such great velocity that Ty Cobb reported he flinched the first time he stepped into the batter's box and Johnson's pitched "hissed with danger" as it blew by. The book is peppered with other anecdotes of players reporting that Johnson was so fast other players could hardly see, much less hit the ball. He probably wasn't faster than Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson in their prime, but he was so much faster than his contemporaries his pitches seemed like bullets.

Yet he was perhaps even more of a gentleman. He was modest,kind,loyal and honest. When Johnson's Washington team finally got into a pennant race in Walter's eighteenth season, there was so much support for him from OPPOSING crowds the cheers for him were repeatedly louder than for the home team, even at stadiums such as Boston's Fenway Park and Babe Ruth's Yankee Stadium.

Johnson's lifetime statistics are amazing. Only Cy Young has more wins than his 417, and if not for his record number of one-run losses, including a record number of 1-0 losses (he also owns the record for 1-0 wins), he would have more wins.

He was among the first five players inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, won two MVP awards, and set the all-time record for batting average by a pitcher with .433 in 1925. He won 20 games 12 times, including a record ten in a row, and over 30 games twice. He had 110 career shutouts - no other pitcher has 100. In 1913 he won 36 games, lost 7, and gave up only 44 runs in 48 games. You need a microscope to see his career ERA of 2.13.

He was also a devoted family man, married to a congressman's daughter until death did part them, with four children. He was so popular that in public appearances with his younger, more handsome available teammates, single young women swooned, even though it was well-known that he was married.

Few American sports heroes have embodied the combination of ability, accomplishment and virtue that were all seen in Walter Johnson. This books stands up well next to the most well-known in the genre. I'd much rather see a film version of this than to have seen "Babe" or "Cobb." This is on the short list of "best baseball books."

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Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train

This is one of the all-time best reads! A fascinating real-life story about one of baseball's greatest pitchers, the author does a wonderful job of bringing history to life. The times and career of Walter Johnson are meticulously researched and presented, but not at the expense of the story. The drama builds to the 1924 World Series and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. It's great to read a biography that brings an era into focus as well as this one.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

How good a pitcher was Washington Senator ace Walter Johnson? Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Joe Jackson considered him the best ever. His career strikeout record lasted for half a century, and no one's ever come close to his mark of 110 shutouts; some of his Senator teams were so bad, the only way Johnson could win was literally to keep opponents from scoring. Of course, the numbers alone don't tell the story. Johnson was a towering figure in the first quarter of the baseball century. One of the most respected--and liked--men in the game, he was something of an anti-Cobb: straight, honest, and clean, with a life off the field as content as it was accomplished on it. This is an excellent, exhaustive biography, showing clear affection for Johnson from the first pitch: Thomas is Johnson's grandson. Despite the blood tie, Thomas doesn't just go straight down the middle; he is willing to work the corners of his grandfather's life, which actually allows his relationship to his subject to add to the work's significant depth. --Jeff Silverman

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