<div dir="ltr"><div>All,</div><div>Please find below and attached Mark Noe's review of Jason Cannon's <i>Charlie Murphy: The Iconoclastic Showman Behind the Chicago Cubs</i></div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b>Cannon, Jason.<span> </span><i>Charlie
Murphy: The Iconoclastic Showman behind the Chicago Cubs</i>.<span> </span><span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span> </span>Lincoln: U Nebraska P, 2022.<span> </span>400 pp.<span>
</span>Illus.<span> </span>$36.95.</b><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Much was made a few years ago of
two events: the centennial of Wrigley Field (2014) and the first Cub World
Series win in 108 years (2016).<span> </span>Some
fans only then learned that the Wrigley family had nothing to do with the team
until 1916, nor that any World Series had ever been won by a team resident in
Wrigley Field until 2016.<span> </span>More than a
few fans remain at best fuzzy on all that still today (notwithstanding the
hints provided by W. P. Kinsella in <i>Shoeless
Joe</i>).<span> </span>Indeed, generations of fans
have simply connected the Wrigley family and Wrigley Field with the fabled
teams of 1906-1910.<span> </span>Entirely wrong
connections.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Jason Cannon has clarified much of
that pre-Wrigley history with his new biography of the architect of those
teams, Charlie Murphy.<span> </span>(Well, one of the
architects: Cannon’s narrative makes clear that Murphy’s money stood behind the
team-building decisions of first baseman and manager Frank Chance, known as the
Peerless Leader.)<span> </span>Murphy, an
almost-accidental owner, bought into the team during the 1905 season, with
significant backing from Charles Taft, a Cincinnati businessman and
half-brother of William Howard Taft.<span>
</span>Murphy had been a reporter in Cincinnati for several years and had come
to know businessman Taft well.<span> </span>Early in
1905, Murphy parleyed his reporter’s connections into a job handling public
relations for the New York Giants.<span> </span>When
the Giants played a series in Chicago in June 1905, he talked with Cub
president Jim Hart, who liked Murphy and hinted that the team would soon be up
for sale.<span> </span>Murphy’s insider connections
let him get a jump on coordinating finances with Charles Taft and others, and
by July he was a minority owner and the new president of the team.<span> </span>In half a year, still in his thirties and with
little more than “sports reporter” on his resum<span>é</span>, Charlie Murphy vaulted to the top management of
the Chicago National League ball club.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The following season, in 1906, the
Cubs won the league pennant; in 1907 and 1908, they won the World Series.<span> </span>Deferring to his manager on team needs, Murphy
spent the money and made the trades needed to fill gaps pointed out by
Chance.<span> </span>Their mutual successes were
apparent to anyone watching, and their cooperative approach was healthy for the
team, making them winners for several seasons.<span>
</span>But the team nucleus aged and egos manifested, with in-fighting
disrupting the roster.<span> </span>The team won
another pennant in 1910, but then began a slide that would continue slowly
downhill, to end only in 1918, when they finally won another league
championship.<span> </span>By then, Murphy and Chance
were both long gone from the team.<span> </span>By
early 1914, Murphy had rubbed some other owners wrong, in part by bending rules
within that otherwise tightly knit group.<span>
</span>He had worn out his welcome, with his team and in the league.<span> </span>A dispute with one of his few remaining star
players, Johnny Evers, led the other owners to force Murphy to sell his stake
in the team, setting up the transition to, first, Charles Weeghman, and then
the Wrigley family.<span> </span>Popular history
would tie the Cubs and the Wrigleys together, for good or ill.<span> </span>Charlie Murphy would largely be forgotten.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">His downfall was ignominious, but
the reality of Murphy’s tenure as owner can’t be denied.<span> </span>At the end, as Cannon phrases it, “In
Murphy’s eight full years as club president, the Cubs earned four pennants, won
two World Series championships, and never finished below third place.”<span> </span>Plus, Charlie Murphy left baseball with a
substantial personal bankroll.<span> </span>Still just
in his mid-forties, he went on to other business, much of it focused on his
hometown of Wilmington, Ohio, where he worked to develop the community’s
economy.<span> </span>All was anticlimax by this
point, though, and he would die of a stroke in 1931, just 63.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Cannon’s book tells this very
American story of rags-to-riches and of pride going before a fall.<span> </span>His narrative weaves together elements that
place Charlie Murphy in the greater baseball history of the era: player-owner
relations, owner-owner relations, league and interleague developments, and the threat
to the National and American Leagues posed by the nascent Federal League.<span> </span>The whole is a big story; here, we get one
angle of that broader picture.<span> </span>And what
a story it is.<span></span></p>
</div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>