Advance Praise for Five O'Clock Lightning
"Come along with Harvey Frommer on a jaunty stroll through baseball eighty years ago. The 1927 Yankees may or may not have been the best team ever, but surely this is the best book about that wonderful concentration of talent."
--George F. Will
"Harvey Frommer brings the perceptive eye of a historian to what was arguably the most feared batting order of all time. Add to that his contagious enthusiasm for classic baseball and you have a most enjoyable book."
--Roger Kahn
"An engrossing and entertaining look at a mythical baseball team. Ride the trains, chew the tobacco, and have fun."
--Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
"How great were the '27 Yankees? So great that even now, eighty years later, they still have the power to astonish and entertain. Reading Five O'Clock Lightning, I felt almost as if I were on the road with the Babe, Lou, and Miller Huggins. Harvey Frommer has a great eye for detail and a wonderful ability to bring his characters to life. The book is a delight."
--Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
"Harvey Frommer hits a home run in this sweet look back at a time when baseball was the only game and the Yankees seemed to be the only team."
--Dan Shaughnessy, author of Senior Year
"Baseball's greatest team as recounted by baseball's greatest author, Harvey Frommer. A surefire classic!"
--Seth Swirsky, author of Baseball Letters and Something to Write Home About
Acknowledgments.
1 The Best of Times.
2 Preseason.
3 The Roster.
4 Spring.
5 Summer.
6 The World Series.
7 After the 1927 Season.
Appendix A: New York Yankee Salaries, 1927.
Appendix B: Babe Ruth’s 60 Home Runs, 1927.
Appendix C: The Last Will and Testament of George Herman Ruth.
Appendix D: Statistics.
Bibliography.
Index.
Frommer (A Yankee Century; Red Sox vs. Yankees) spares no detail in this exhaustive but sometimes tedious recounting of the 1927 New York Yankees championship season. The team, which won 110 games when the regular season was eight games shorter than it is today, starred the iconic Babe Ruth and a young Lou Gehrig. Ruth had his career high 60 home run season, and Gehrig batted in a league-leading 175 runs. The Yankees' trademark rallies were dubbed "Five O'clock Lightning," as they often scored in late innings when the clock struck five (Yankee Stadium in those days had no lights, and most games started at 3:30 p.m.). Frommer sets the stage with a sweeping overview of New York in the 1920s, and then chronologically rehashes the preseason, spring training, each month of the regular season and then the four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He concludes with a chapter containing obituaries of all 31 members of the team, many of whom succumbed at early ages: Gehrig died 14 years after the 1927 season, at the age of 38, and Ruth 21 years later, at 53. Unfortunately, Frommer fails to put together an engaging narrative, simply offering a compendium of facts and statistics. (Nov.) (Publishers Weekly, September 10, 2007)
"Baseball fans, particularly those who root for the Bronx bombers, will devour this book..." (simcoe.com, Thursday 22nd November)
Harvey Frommer has been writing about sports for nearly thirty-five years. He has been honored by the New York State Legislature and cited in the Congressional Record as a sports historian, a SABR Keynote Speaker, and an expert witness for Major League Baseball. Dr. Frommer is a professor emeritus at City University of New York and a professor at Dartmouth College in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program. He has written nearly forty sports books, including Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry, A Yankee Century, and New York City Baseball.
Eight decades is a very long time in professional sports. Yet eighty years after their spectacular season and thrilling World Series victory, the 1927 New York Yankees are still widely recognized as the greatest team in Major League Baseball history. Not only did they dominate their league and run away with the pennant, they became the first American League team ever to win the World Series in four games straight. They weren't called "Murderers' Row" for nothing. But many of the most fascinating and exciting details of that storied season have long been forgotten; many more have never been revealed to the public—until now.
In Five O'Clock Lightning, award-winning sports writer Harvey Frommer puts you in the dugout, takes you aboard the team train, and lets you peek into the hotel rooms of the game's most celebrated team and its larger-than-life heroes. You'll meet legendary manager Miller Huggins, whose diminutive stature masked a gigantic store of baseball savvy; the young, robust, and exquisitely talented Lou Gehrig, known at that time as "the Buster"; the prickly but powerful Long Bob Meusel; the taciturn and talented Tony Lazzeri, anxious to redeem himself after blowing a key at-bat in the final game of the 1926 Series; and, towering over them all, the Babe.
Quite fittingly, the story of the '27 Yanks begins and ends with Babe Ruth: from his fabled, and very public, preseason contract negotiations with team owner Jake Ruppert, which made Ruth the highest-paid player in baseball, to his raucous barnstorming tour with Gehrig following their spectacular victory in the Series. In between, he hit his sixtieth home run on the next-to-last day of the season, topping his previous world record of fifty-nine, set in 1921.
Harvey Frommer draws on a huge amount of archival material—some controversial, some never before published—including oral history from '27 Yankees and opponents, long-buried letters, and diary notations. He paints a vivid and detailed portrait of the best team in baseball chasing greatness in Jazz Age, Prohibition-era New York City in all its pre-Depression glory.
Packed with facts and statistics that cover everything from batting averages and fielding percentages to standings, player salaries, and World Series shares, Five O'Clock Lightning reveals the hidden history of the most memorable team ever to play the game of baseball.
Advance Praise for Five O'Clock Lightning
"Come along with Harvey Frommer on a jaunty stroll through baseball eighty years ago. The 1927 Yankees may or may not have been the best team ever, but surely this is the best book about that wonderful concentration of talent."
—George F. Will
"Harvey Frommer brings the perceptive eye of a historian to what was arguably the most feared batting order of all time. Add to that his contagious enthusiasm for classic baseball and you have a most enjoyable book."
—Roger Kahn
"An engrossing and entertaining look at a mythical baseball team. Ride the trains, chew the tobacco, and have fun."
—Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
"How great were the '27 Yankees? So great that even now, eighty years later, they still have the power to astonish and entertain. Reading Five O'Clock Lightning, I felt almost as if I were on the road with the Babe, Lou, and Miller Huggins. Harvey Frommer has a great eye for detail and a wonderful ability to bring his characters to life. The book is a delight."
—Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
"Harvey Frommer hits a home run in this sweet look back at a time when baseball was the only game and the Yankees seemed to be the only team."
—Dan Shaughnessy, author of Senior Year
"Baseball's greatest team as recounted by baseball's greatest author, Harvey Frommer. A surefire classic!"
—Seth Swirsky, author of Baseball Letters and Something to Write Home About
"Baseball's greatest team as recounted by baseball's greatest author, Harvey Frommer. A surefire classic!"
—Seth Swirsky, author of Baseball Letters and Something to Write Home About
"How great were the ’27 Yankees? So great that even now, 80 years later, they still have the power to astonish and entertain. Reading Five O'Clock Lightning, I felt almost as if I were on the road with the Babe, Lou and Miller Huggins. Harvey Frommer has a great eye for detail and a wonderful ability to bring his characters to life. The book is a delight."
--Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrigand and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
"Maybe you know a little bit about Eddie Bennett, the hunch-backed, good-luck batboy of the 1927 Yankees. Maybe you don't. You know it all now with 'Five O'Clock Lighting'...plus the fact that Warren Buffet used little Eddie as part of his strategy to become a megabillionaire. Settle back with Harvey Frommer and enjoy the complicated characters who made up the best baseball team ever. Ride the trains and chew the tobacco and have fun. And don't spit on Harvey's shoes."
—Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
"Come along with Harvey Frommer on a jaunty stroll through baseball 80 years ago. The 1927 Yankees may or may not have been the best team ever, but surely this is the best book about that wonderful concentration of talent."
--George F. Will
"Harvey Frommer hits a home run in this sweet look back at a time when baseball was the only game and the Yankees seemed to be the only team."
--Dan Shaughnessy, author of Senior Year
"An engrossing and entertaining look at a mythical baseball team. Ride the trains and chew the tobacco and have fun. And don't spit on Harvey's shoes."
—Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth
"Harvey Frommer brings the perceptive eye of an historian to what was arguably the most feared batting order of all time. Add to that his contagious enthusiasm for classic baseball and you have a most enjoyable book."
--Roger Kahn
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Distributor: John Wiley & Sons
Publication Date: 10-26-2007
Pages: 272
Measurements: 240.0mm X 163.0mm X 25.2mm X 18.56oz
