Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty


Before the feuding owners turned to Ed Barrow to be general manager in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen more as well as ten World Series. This biography of the incomparable Barrow is also the story of how he built the most successful sports franchise in American history.


Barrow spent fifty years in baseball. He was in the middle of virtually every major conflict and held practically every job except player. Daniel R. Levitt describes Barrow’s pre-Yankees years, when he managed Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox to their last World Series Championship before the “curse.” He then details how Barrow assembled a winning Yankees team both by purchasing players outright and by developing talent through a farm system.


The story of the making of the great Yankees dynasty reveals Barrow’s genius for organizing, for recognizing baseball talent, and for exploiting the existing economic environment. Because Barrow was a player in so many of baseball’s key events, his biography gives a clear and eye-opening picture of how America’s sport was played in the twentieth century, on the field and off. A complex portrait of a larger-than-life character in the annals of baseball, this book is also an inside history of how the sport’s competitive environment evolved and how the Yankees came to dominate it.


Daniel R. Levitt is the coauthor of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, winner of the Sporting News–SABR Baseball Research Award. He has also published numerous baseball articles and biographical essays

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Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty


Before the feuding owners turned to Ed Barrow to be general manager in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen more as well as ten World Series. This biography of the incomparable Barrow is also the story of how he built the most successful sports franchise in American history.


Barrow spent fifty years in baseball. He was in the middle of virtually every major conflict and held practically every job except player. Daniel R. Levitt describes Barrow’s pre-Yankees years, when he managed Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox to their last World Series Championship before the “curse.” He then details how Barrow assembled a winning Yankees team both by purchasing players outright and by developing talent through a farm system.


The story of the making of the great Yankees dynasty reveals Barrow’s genius for organizing, for recognizing baseball talent, and for exploiting the existing economic environment. Because Barrow was a player in so many of baseball’s key events, his biography gives a clear and eye-opening picture of how America’s sport was played in the twentieth century, on the field and off. A complex portrait of a larger-than-life character in the annals of baseball, this book is also an inside history of how the sport’s competitive environment evolved and how the Yankees came to dominate it.


Daniel R. Levitt is the coauthor of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, winner of the Sporting News–SABR Baseball Research Award. He has also published numerous baseball articles and biographical essays

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Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty

Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty

by Daniel R. Levitt
Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty

Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty

by Daniel R. Levitt

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$24.95 
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Overview


Before the feuding owners turned to Ed Barrow to be general manager in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen more as well as ten World Series. This biography of the incomparable Barrow is also the story of how he built the most successful sports franchise in American history.


Barrow spent fifty years in baseball. He was in the middle of virtually every major conflict and held practically every job except player. Daniel R. Levitt describes Barrow’s pre-Yankees years, when he managed Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox to their last World Series Championship before the “curse.” He then details how Barrow assembled a winning Yankees team both by purchasing players outright and by developing talent through a farm system.


The story of the making of the great Yankees dynasty reveals Barrow’s genius for organizing, for recognizing baseball talent, and for exploiting the existing economic environment. Because Barrow was a player in so many of baseball’s key events, his biography gives a clear and eye-opening picture of how America’s sport was played in the twentieth century, on the field and off. A complex portrait of a larger-than-life character in the annals of baseball, this book is also an inside history of how the sport’s competitive environment evolved and how the Yankees came to dominate it.


Daniel R. Levitt is the coauthor of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, winner of the Sporting News–SABR Baseball Research Award. He has also published numerous baseball articles and biographical essays


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780803229815
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Publication date: 03/01/2010
Pages: 456
Sales rank: 1,041,865
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author


Daniel R. Levitt is the coauthor of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, winner of the Sporting News–SABR Baseball Research Award. He has also published numerous baseball articles and biographical essays.
 

Table of Contents




List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

 

Part 1: Every Job in Baseball, 1868-1920

1. "The Best Deal the Yankees Ever Made"

2. Hustling and Scrapping

3. Forcing His Way into Baseball

4. A Pennant in Toronto

5. Major League

6. Back to the Minors

7. League President

8. "Fight These Fellows to the Finish"

9. No Respite

10. World Champions

11. "Please Explain Why Boston Club Has Neglected to Suspend Mays"

12. "I Am Going to Sell Ruth to the Yankees"

 

Part 2: The Yankees Years, 1920-1953

13. Business Manager of the Yankees

14. Turmoil and Success

15. Collapse

16. Rebuilding a Dynasty

17. "I Just Couldn't See Him"

18. McCarthy

19. "If You Say I Did It, I Did; but I Did It Asleep"

20. "Close Deal"

21. "I Like to Do Business with Smart People"

22. President of the Yankees

23. "Pure as the Driven Snow"

24. "Over His Dead Body"

25. The Hall of Fame

 

Appendix

Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Marty Appel

“Ed Barrow was a towering figure in baseball who arrived in New York to construct the Yankee dynasty—and who left decades later, with the dynasty and his legacy well intact. Dan Levitt has captured his power within the game, his complicated relationships, and his work ethic with a wonderful look at a man who helped shape the game for half a century.”—Marty Appel, former Yankees public relations director and baseball historian

Boston Globe - Katherine A. Powers

"Levitt revisits the vexed matter of Sox owner Harry Frazee’s motives in selling baseball’s greatest player to New York and, in so doing, debunks the previous debunking of Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson in 2000, in Red Sox Century. . . . Eight years ago Stout and Johnson convinced me of their views; today I am just as convinced by Levitt."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

Rob Neyer

“When we think about the beginnings of the Yankees’ long dynasty, we think of Gehrig, and DiMaggio, and the Babe. Especially the Babe. But thanks to Dan Levitt, now we know that mastermind Ed Barrow belongs on that list, too. Perhaps at the top.”—Rob Neyer, ESPN.com

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