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BaseballChronology.com: Seymour Medal Honorees for 1999

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 1999, 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		Baseball's Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley's Oakland A's by Bruce Markusen A year by year look at the building of the Team of the Super70s.
FINALIST		Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball by Leonard Koppett "What makes the Concise History such a valuable addition to an already packed baseball bookshelf is that it's an original. First and foremost, its strong, narrative push spans the divide between statistical encyclopedias and the chronicles that generally focus on individual years or teams or issues. It's quite thorough--reaching back to the 1840s and covering the game up through the 1998 sale of the Dodgers--clearly linking the game of baseball to the business of baseball. It covers trends as well as players and events, and, in one of its most useful features, offers succinct seasonal recaps at the end of each chapter. Koppett's a fine writer with a well-established voice, which he uses to analyze as well as report; he's no fence straddler on the more complex questions like free agency, franchise moves, collusion, realignment, and the replacement of family ownership by conglomerates. Like a good home run race, it's a book unique to this particular game, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere." Read more...
FINALIST		Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis by David Pietrusza "Baseball's first commissioner cast such a long and powerful shadow over the game, it's often hard to untangle his contribution from his personality, and his life from his lasting myth. The truth that emerges from this exhaustive and engaging biography of Judge Landis has no problem matching the outsized legend stride for stride. Landis moved into the public spotlight to clean up the national pastime after the disgrace of the 1919 World Series, but there was much more to this complex man and his complex career. Judge and Jury chronicles the entirety." Read more...
FINALIST		When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 by William J. Ryczek "Researched from primary sources, the game of the late 1860s is described season-by-season: the fields, the crowds, the strategy, the rules, the style of play, and the confusing struggles to crown a national champion, with all the chicanery and machinations of the contenders. Such landmark events as the Washington Nationals’ pioneering 1867 tour and the Cincinnati Red Stockings’ undefeated 1869 season are covered." Read more...
FINALIST		Baseball's Radical for All Seasons: A Biography of John Montgomery Ward by David Stevens "Born in 1860, Ward pushed himself and the cutting edge of sports as hard as he could until his death in 1925. Despite his experience at Penn State, he earned two degrees from Columbia University. As a baseball player, Ward starred on four world champion teams. As a pitcher, Sandy Koufax is the closest match-up to his career statistics; as a shortstop, the nearest counterpart is Ozzie Smith. However, he was as famous for his stormy affairs with Broadway actresses as he was for his statistics. Outside of the stadium, Ward was an early players' rights attorney who, by age 25, founded the first union for athletes, and in 1886 attempted to bring black players into the major leagues Ward led a rebellion of players against the National League in 1890, only to see his union and the Players' League snuffed out. Ward finished his life as an early American golfing star and the happy husband of a women's suffragist." Read more...
FINALIST		The League that Failed by David Q. Voigt "The League That Failed cuts through the haze that surrounds 19th-century baseball history, and portrays a classic, colorful era when baseball was chaotic, struggled over by players, coaches, sportswriters, fans, and owners. It recounts the stormy atmosphere after the Inter-League Wars of 1890 and 1891, when the victorious National League made a bald-faced bid to monopolize major league baseball in the United States, succeeding for eight years with the self-styled "Big League," which dominated the game while simultaneously gaining infamous notoriety for such high-handed acts as unilaterally capping players' salaries, failing to protect umpires from physical abuse, and threatening city governments if ballpark attendance dipped." Read more...
BEST BASEBALL BOOKS OF EACH YEAR ACCORDING TO SABR