Cooperstown confidential : heroes, rogues, and the inside story of the Baseball Hall of Fame

by Zeʼev Chafets

Paper Book, 2009

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Bloomsbury USA, c2009.

Description

The first book to draw back the veil on the Hall of Fame, combining an insider's history of the Hall and its players with a consideration of baseball's place in culture.

Media reviews

That Chafets... loves baseball (and his hometown Detroit Tigers), there is no doubt. But here he gives a very fair and critical view of the hall, recalling the tribute not only to the game, but some of the more unsavory characters who were admitted -- such as the racist Ty Cobb, who holds the major
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league record for highest career batting average.
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3 more
The approach throughout this short book is breezy, jokey and anecdotal, rather than exhaustive or earnestly finger-wagging.
Zev Chafets’ Cooperstown Confidential, a slender book that serves as both a revisionist history of the Hall and a polemic in favor of socially liberal admission policies (Pete Rose and steroids users will rejoice if Chafets has any impact on voting patterns), manages to be earnest and playful,
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though not in the traditional ways... Earnest because it spends more time addressing issues like racism and commercialism than whether Bert Blyleven deserves a plaque; and playful because it gleefully spits in the face of anyone who thinks the Hall’s (very thin) Puritanical sheen is anything but a “public relations sham.”
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Cooperstown Confidential brims with excellent reporting, cogent analysis, and delicious dish. At times it's awfully funny (one widely respected player was married, writes Chafets, "but he wasn't a fanatic about it"). And it demonstrates that the Hall of Fame is more hollow than hallowed.

User reviews

LibraryThing member mjgrogan
This book seems simultaneously too thin and reasonably comprehensive. Ostensibly, this is something of an exposé about the vaunted “shrine” in Cooperstown and those enshrined figures cast in bronze. It is that – though perhaps only riveting or surprising to naïve tween fans – but it’s
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also a diatribe for the steroid era. That is, Chafets positions the history of the founding of the institution in the wake of the Doubleday myth (post-sewing dude with innumerable, concurrent wives), the numerous controversial/miserable specimens selected to represent the highest standards of the game, and the oft compromised selection criteria that has attempted to keep pace with the nation’s vacillating cultural climate (chronically 15 years late) to establish the basis on which future committees should make their voting determinations when it comes to players with artificially enlarged and/or shrunken features.
If it’s not clear (and I’m not risking one of those “spoiler alerts”), the author disregards the notion that Bonds, McGuire, and other asterisk guys should be excluded. After talking with the supposed top scientists and medical professionals, there is clearly no agreed upon conclusion about exactly how these substances might benefit performance. The author sort of flippantly points out that if everyone uses, then the field is level as they say. If the more important Hall position regards the purity of cross-comparison or continuity across all the generations of pro baseball, then one could easily question whether PEDs alter the equation any more than, say, wearing gloves (as the first few decades went without)! If one performance benefit is a slightly quicker jump when heading to second base, is it any different than the cocaine or amphetamines that have long been associated with certain players (including some subsequently bronzed)? If ‘roids help those aging or injured pitchers perform with less discomfort, how is that appalling compared to OxyContin shots or the once ubiquitous flask of whisky? I tend to agree with the author. I’ll also admit to being a die-hard relativist and I’m perhaps not the most intense baseball fan (I’m an Astros devotee living within walking distance of Fenway Park. This by default makes me a half-assed enthusiast subject to much ridicule).
When I “reviewed” The Last Real Season, I opined that the emerging PED issue paralleled a more serious level of professional play, rather than a final blow to a game that had deteriorated since the halcyon days of chronic hangovers, spit balls, firework-wielding fans, and corporate control over individual players that apparently ended in 1975. Chafet’s speculation that the 1927 Yankees would by no means win a trophy in the 2000s is right on, and the beauty of his book is the destruction of such nostalgic notions of seamless continuity with the black and white (without the black, of course), Ye Olde days of baseball. Despite the retro uniforms and HOK’s quirky brick ballparks, the game is different today. And if we can say that racial integration, more conveniently scheduled evening games, mitts and helmets, enforced rules, overhand pitching, and typically not-trashed players makes for a better professional baseball environment, then we might even posit that today’s game is superior!
The larger issue is whether Chafet’s book should be positioned as “the” inside story of the Hall rather than a pontification and casually researched narrative. It’s a selective look that concludes in a far too contemporaneous manner for the scope implied by the title I think. It’s like the antithesis of Harold Seymour’s gargantuan volumes yet I feel a much more engaging read (and it only requires 1/458th the commitment). If it’s not The Unauthorized Bible of Cooperstown, it’s at least an entertaining-yet-well considered offering.
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LibraryThing member markfinl
Zev Chafets is a mensch. He has written a story that needed to be told. No sport is more full of bs than baseball and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown turns out to be the shrine to bs. Chafets shows that all of the arguments used regarding the character of potential Hall of Famers such as Pete Rose
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are moot. The Hall has enshrined crooks, gamblers, drunks, racists and possibly a murderer since its inception. Chafets also argues persuasively that all of the hand-wringing that goes on regarding what to do with steroid users is silly. There is no proof that steroids actually enhance performance and furthermore Chafets shows that drug use has been a part of baseball for many many years. It was great fun to read a book that takes a pin to the hot-air balloons of pomposity that surround our "national pastime."My only regret is that this book did not exist five years ago so that I would not have wasted my money going to the Hall of Fame.
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LibraryThing member jbarouch
So far, the first 75 pages have piqued my interest. I just finished the section about Native American baseball players that I found especially interesting. A lot of research and statistics went into this book. After I finish the book I now hope to go to Cooperstown, Hof; in the summer of course!

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