The Winning Formula

Book Review by David Shiner

Let’s begin by correcting some possible misconceptions about this excellent book. First, it’s not really about great baseball teams. The first half of the twentieth century featured quite a few great clubs: the 1906–10 Cubs; the 1910–14 and 1929–31 Athletics; the 1942–46 Cardinals; and any number of Yankee squads, among others. This book doesn’t deal with any of them. Another batch of mini-dynasties flourished in the latter portion of the nineteenth century. None of those teams are chronicled here, either. The only teams featured in this book that really qualify as “great,” at least for more than a single season, are the Oakland A’s of the early 1970s and the Atlanta Braves of more recent vintage.

The book does profile some very good teams, but it also discusses clubs that were underachievers or even just plain lousy. If you want to find out why the Boston Red Sox were as pathetic as they were in the 1930s, this book tells you. If you want to know why the post–1946 Sox and the Minnesota Twins of the 1960s won so few pennants, the authors explain that too. Paths, yes; glory, no.

All that said, the title is partially accurate: this book explores the paths that teams took to be the way they were, warts or otherwise. No one expected that the Washington Senators—“first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League”—would win consecutive pennants in the mid-1920s, but they did. Almost everyone expected the Montreal Expos of the Carter-Dawson-Raines-Wallach era to appear in a few Fall Classics, but they didn’t. Armour and Levitt tell you why, and they do so most convincingly.

Paths to Glory provides a sharp contrast to books like Tom Meany’s Baseball’s Greatest Teams, which profiles the great teams of the first half of the twentieth century. Meany’s stories characteristically started in April and ended in October, while Armour and Levitt begin their accounts long before the heyday or otherwise of their subjects, detailing the personnel moves that made those teams what they were. In doing so, they undertake a good deal of Bill James-type analysis. When the Astros traded Rusty Staub to the fledgling Montreal Expos for Donn Clendenon and Jesus Alou prior to the 1969 season, for example, did either team have rational grounds to believe it was getting the better of the deal? The authors use statistical induction to reach a conclusion. That isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I found it fascinating and instructive, especially in conjunction with the retelling of the stories of the prologue to and the aftermath of the trade. Paths to Glory does that sort of thing in spades, and does it very well indeed.

The foundation of the book is equal parts perspiration and inspiration. For a good example of both, the authors compare the careers of Sandy Koufax and the late Hoyt Wilhelm. The juxtaposition of those two pitchers would hardly have occurred to most baseball fans, but the choice is an excellent one. As Armour and Levitt point out, Koufax and Wilhelm pitched a very similar number of innings over the course of their careers, allowing almost identical numbers of hits, walks, and runs. This belies the many differences between the two men, most prominently the fact that Koufax was in first grade when Wilhelm first pitched professionally and in the Hall of Fame by the time the ageless knuckleballer retired.

The joint authors’ facility with their subject is also praiseworthy. Whether they’re discussing Joe Kelley or Fred Luderus or Firpo Marberry or Gary Sheffield, they are as comfortable as if they were talking about their own kids. Simply put, Armour and Leavitt know their baseball history, which is clearly reflected in the surehandedness of their writing.

The material they present is not only accurate with respect to the facts, but also with respect to understanding what those facts demonstrate. They tell us that the American League was markedly superior to the National in the teens, and it was. They state that Lefty Williams was more lucky (won-lost record) than good (ERA), and he was. They argue that the Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz Braves were (and are) historically similar to the Robinson-Reese-Campanella-Snider Brooklyn Dodgers of the late 1940s and 50s, and they were. They’re not right about everything, but they’re right about almost everything, and they’re right in ways that add appreciably to the reader’s understanding of the subjects the authors discuss.

Not everyone can write a great baseball book, although many of us try. Mark Armour and Dan Levitt have succeeded, and they deserve our congratulations. —EFQ

DAVID SHINER has been a member of the faculty at Shimer College in Waukegan, Illinois, for more than twenty-five years. His book Baseball’s Greatest Players: The Saga Continues, a sequel to Tom Meany’s Baseball’s Greatest Players, is available from Superior Books at www.superiorbooks.com.

Copyright 2003 by David Shiner.