Note: Thank you to NetGalley, University of Nebraska Press, and author Thomas Wolf for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Baseball in the Roaring Twenties is a bit of a misnomer. The book is actually about the 1926 season and what was happening in baseball at the time. To his credit, author Thomas Wolf does include the Negro Leagues as part of the story. Although they were still segregated at the time, they featured some of the best players to have ever played the game. Wolf laments that records were not as well-kept in regard to the Negro Leagues, but he pieces the season together for them quite well with what he can find.

The backstory to the teams that would venture to the 1926 World Series is given, as well as the players who were on them. Wolf spends a lot of time showing the fallout from the 1919 World Series and the scandals that followed. The gamblers were still out there, looking to cash in any way they could. Some of the same ones involved in the 1919 scandal were still hanging around ballparks. Wolf also tells the story of two other accusations of alleged fixing, one of which involved two superstars of the day. I had never heard that accusation, and though it boiled down to he-said, he-said, I found it to be plausible.

All of this is background to an exciting season that culminates in the Yankees and Cardinals meeting in the World Series. The Yankees’ lineup was nearly the same as the famous one of 1927, but it was not the powerhouse it would become just yet.

I found it more interesting what was going on surrounding the season. Grace Coolidge, wife of the President, was an ardent baseball fan who attended nearly all of the Washington Nationals’ games. Although she cajoled her husband into attending at least once, he was not the fan she was. Likewise, I really admired Rube Foster, the player/manager who was championing an organized Negro League. Sadly, he was cut down before he could see the fruit of his labors.

Of course, legends such as Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby play pivotal roles in this baseball season. Wolf manages to bring the setting alive quite well and kept me interested throughout the book. It’s not a very long book, and there are pictures as well as a bibliography and references. In many ways, it’s hard to grasp that all of this was a century ago. I heard the stories from this time back when I first began watching baseball.

I’m very glad that by “baseball,” Wolf did not just mean “white baseball.” It’s interesting to see what was happening among the Negro players at the same time Babe Ruth and others were playing the more popular game. Wolf gives an epilogue telling what happened to some of the players who featured prominently in this season in both of the leagues. I did enjoy this snapshot of a time when baseball really was the only American sport.