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BaseballChronology.com: Seymour Medal Honorees for 1997

By Patrick Mondout

SABR (Society For American Baseball Research) annually awards the Seymour Medal to the best book of baseball history or biography published in the previous year. Below are the finalists and winners for 1997, including links to the book at Amazon.com for your convenience. We also have a list of all winners and finalists from 1996-2006.

SEYMOUR MEDAL FINALISTS & WINNERS
WINNER		Honus Wagner, The Life of Baseball's "Flying Dutchman" by Arthur D. Hittner "Regarded by many of his contemporaries as the greatest baseball player of all time, John Peter “Honus” Wagner enjoyed a remarkable career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. His record of 17 consecutive .300-plus seasons is a mark that will probably never be broken. He led the National League eight times in hitting, six times in slugging percentage and five times in stolen bases. Known as the Flying Dutchman, he also excelled in the field, defining the shortstop position for a generation." Read more...
FINALIST		Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike"King" Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar by Marty Appel "Mike King Kelly was a hard-living, hard-drinking son of a Civil War veteran whose skills at baseball and infectious charm turned him into the game's first hero, and a symbol of what it meant to be a celebrity in America in the 1880s and 1890s. A Hall of Famer and a two-time batting champion, Kelly's greatest contribution was probably in the popularity he brought to the game, which resulted in the 20th century's first fans, as the game began to mature from the rough and tumble times of Mike and his cohorts." Read more...
FINALIST		Honus Wagner: A Biography by Dennis DeValeria and Jeanne Burke DeValeria "In Honus Wagner, the DeValerias have produced a clean hit, maybe not a home run, but, befitting a star of the dead-ball era, a well-placed, well-struck double. As solid as Wagner himself--and at 5'11" and 200 pounds, he was solid--the "Flying Dutchman" emerges as a shy man who loved the game and loved to play it, and that's about the extent of it. He was a regular guy, no tormented Cobb, no educated Mathewson, no flamboyant Ruth. There are simply no strikes against him; he was unfussy, immensely likeable, anxious to please, tremendously supportive of his friends and teammates, and, while inordinately polite on the field, off of it he rarely pulled his punch lines. If anything haunted him, it was his poor performance against the Red Sox in the 1903 World Series, which he more than made up for against Cobb and the Tigers six years later." Read more...
FINALIST		Brooklyn's Dodgers: The Bums, The Borough, and the Best of Baseball for 1947-1957 by Carl E. Prince "This slim, illustrated volume makes a fascinating attempt at capturing in theoretical, sociological terms the love affair between the Dodgers--the team of Branch Rickey and Duke Snider, of Pee Wee Reese and, above all, Jackie Robinson--and the homely, family-oriented, working-class borough of Brooklyn in the 1950s. Robinson, a complex and courageous man, is captured here, warts and all; few remember that the gifted ballplayer denounced the great actor Paul Robeson to the House Un-American Activities Committee. But it's the glory of those summer days that lingers in the memories, and in the pages of this book." Read more...
FINALIST		Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself 1903-1953 by G. Edward White "At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a purer past, G. Edward White shows how seemingly irrational business decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century. It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with drinking and gambling. White describes its progression to an almost mythic status as an idyllic game, popular among people of all ages and classes. He then recounts the owner's efforts, often supported by the legal system, to preserve this image." Read more...
BEST BASEBALL BOOKS OF EACH YEAR ACCORDING TO SABR