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BaseballChronology.com: Larry Ritter Award Honorees

By Patrick Mondout

The Larry Ritter Award is bestowed annually by SABR's Deadball Era committee to the best "book published each year, primarily set in or primarily about the deadball era."

We have a list of all winners from 2002-2006 below, including links to the book at Amazon.com for your convenience. Note that the committee did not list the finalists/nominees in 2003. Awards announced early in the year for the previous year's books. Thus, the 2004 award below was announced in July of 2005. Click on a year below to see the winners and finalists.

RITTER AWARD WINNERS
YEAR	WINNER
2006		Peach: Ty Cobb in His Time and Ours by Richard Bak Although it has been more than 75 years since he last laced up his spikes, Ty Cobb remains arguably the greatest player in the long history of baseball. Certainly the Detroit Tigers outfielder remains the most controversial. He hit .367 over 24 seasons (1905-1928), won a dozen batting titles, and was the first man elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. But it was his blowtorch personality that set the "Georgia Peach" apart from all others. Read more...
2005		The American Indian Integration of Baseball by Jeffrey Powers-Beck "Jeffrey Powers-Beck provides biographical profiles of forgotten Native players such as Elijah Pinnance, George Johnson, Louis Leroy, and Moses Yellow Horse, along with profiles of better-known athletes such as Jim Thorpe, Charles Albert Bender, and John Tortes Meyers. Combining analysis of popular-press accounts with records from boarding schools for Native youth, where baseball was used as a tool of assimilation, Powers-Beck shows how American Indians battled discrimination and racism to integrate American baseball." Read more...
2004		The Tour to End All Tours: The Story of Major League Baseball’s 1913-1914 World Tour by James E. Elfers "This book follows the two teams, whose members include Christy Mathewson, Jim Thorpe, and half a dozen other future Hall-of-Famers, as they barnstorm across the United States and sail the seas to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, finishing with a game before twenty thousand fans and King George V. Along the way, baseball’s envoys meet such dignitaries as Pope Pius X, tea magnate Thomas Lipton, and the last khedive of Egypt. They play the tables of Monaco, survive a near-shipwreck, and cram a lifetime’s worth of adventures into six months. Their story, told here for the first time, gives readers a glimpse into baseball history and the innocence and spirit of a long-gone era." Read more...
2003		Before They Were the Bombers: The New York Yankees' Early Years, 1903-1915 by Jim Reisler "The early Yankees, who spent their first 12 years known as the Highlanders and were occasionally known as the Americans and the Invaders, get the attention they deserve in this work. It tells the story up until the sale of the Yankees in December 1914, beginning with 1903 when the team was formed from the remnants of the Baltimore Orioles. Led by future Hall of Famers "Wee" Willie Keeler, Jack Chesbro, and Clark Griffith, they were the most expensive major league team ever assembled—but they are remembered primarily for their terrible failures, which included losing a club-low 103 games in 1908 and finishing 55 games out of first place in 1912. Yes, the Yankees." Read more...
2002		Hal Chase: The Defiant Life and Turbulent Times of Baseball's Biggest Crook by Martin Kohout "Hal Chase is considered by many to be one of the best first basemen ever to play the game of baseball. He was able to make the routine look spectacular, the spectacular look routine. But Chase will never have his plaque in Cooperstown because he has gone down in history as the biggest crook in baseball. Chase was repeatedly accused of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team, and various other crimes, yet with his relaxed nature he always managed to get off the hook for his misdeeds by working his charm. His major league career lasted from 1905 to 1919, and by the mid–1930s he was a destitute alcoholic living off friends. The last fifteen years of Chase’s life saw him hospitalized repeatedly for a variety of ailments, living off a sister and brother-in-law who loathed him. This work traces the turbulent life and times of Hal Chase from his humble beginnings to his sad end." Read more...
SABR'S BEST BASEBALL BOOKS OF THE DEADBALL ERA