David L. Fleitz

I am very tardy in writing this early reviewers review for a couple of reasons. First, I moved in the midst of reading and misplaced the book. Second, although I am a baseball fan I found this incredibly detailed account of Napoleon Lajoie's life and baseball career tough going. I would recommend this book only for the kind of fan who is into statistics and game details. I have no doubt that Jajoie was a remarkable ballplayer but whether he deserves to the called "King of Ballplayers" is still open to question.… (mais)

Napoleon Lajoie: King of Ballplayers by David L. Fleitz
I enjoy reading a good book about baseball and the history of baseball. There are many unknown or lesser known characters in the American game. Napoleon Lajoie is one of those characters. We remember Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Pete Rose, and so many more, but who knows about Napoleon Lajoie?
David L. Fleitz does a good job writing about this unsung hero. There is humor as well as drama. After reading about Lajoie, I want to learn more about this batsman.… (mais)

This is an extremely well-researched, comprehensive biography of one of the great turn-of-the-century ballplayers. For any historian of the sport, it would make an excellent resource.

Unfortunately, for the common fan, it's just a little too dense to make for a great read. The early days of Lajoie and his post-career life were nice and breezy, but the accounts of his playing days were too detailed to be as enjoyable as I'd hoped for. Every season (or in some cases two seasons combined) of Lajoie's career gets its own chapter, and most go through almost a week-by-week accounting of the games. The detail is astounding, and for the most part quite interesting -- but again, that kind of detail makes it hard to just read and learn about the player. I think the fault lies more in my expectations or my desires of what the book would be, rather than any error by the author. The writing is good enough that it didn't seem like I was just reading over box scores, and Fleitz did a fine job weaving the storylines of each season through these accounts.

There are times when the book reads a bit strangely, though. In places it reads like each chapter was written entirely independently of the others; when an event mentioned in one chapter is brought up in the next, it is discussed as though the reader would never had heard of it before. I would guess there to be at least a half dozen examples of this throughout the book, and each one felt rather jarring.

If you want an in-depth study of one of the oft-overlooked greats of baseball's early days, this is for you. If you're a casual baseball fan, you'll find some entertaining stories, some aspects of those days you may have been unaware of (for example: in those days an umpire could issue suspensions to players), and a great deal of context surrounding what you may have already known about those times and players.… (mais)