Under pallor, under the shadow: The 1920 American League pennant race that rattled and rebuilt baseball by Bill Felber

University of Nebraska Press, 2011, 204 pages. www.amazon.com

One of the world’s most famous philosophers, Yogi Berra, once said: ‘It’s ’déjà vu’ all over again.’ This major league baseball season is jammed full of high drama, low antics, a very abbreviated season and multi billionaire owners battling multi millionaire players for a slice of mega trillions in revenues.

But nothing can hold a candle to the 1920 American League pennant race. The story of that season is too good to be fiction. Bill Felber proves that this season really changed major league baseball forever. It also marked the sport’s great popularity. That season Babe Ruth would shatter the single season homerun record, a popular star was killed by an errant beanball, and a corrupt dynasty would come to a shattering end. You couldn’t even make this stuff up. It also allowed an iron-fisted Baseball Commissioner to commandeer baseball for almost a quarter of the century in an effort to clean up the sleaze and corruption. For baseball fanatics. 5 stars.