Mad Yankees: The Hartford Retreat for the Insane and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry Book

ALERT: ALL-TIME GREAT BASEBALL BIOGRAPHY

In one of the greatest sports biographies ever published in terms of inherent interest in the featured athlete, amount of source material, analysis and educated conclusions, and writing style, Reed Browning scores a perfect game - much like his featured subject once did - in “Cy Young: A Baseball Life.”

As a lifelong baseball fan who loves collecting baseball cards and learning the history of each player behind the card and statistics, I’ve always been fascinated by the all-time winningest pitcher, Cy Young. Two questions that I keep coming back to are 1) How impressive were his 511 wins really, and 2) Did he truly deserve to be eternally graced on the annual award handed out to the best pitcher(s) of the major league? From the word go, Browning fulfilled all of my deepest thoughts on Cy Young and then some, all the while presenting his incredible research in enjoyable writing prose. Though published by an academic historian before the advent of the numerous outstanding baseball biographies of the 2010s, this book stands alone as one of the most personably written works I have ever encountered. Browning succeeds where many academics fail, in that he chooses to be an engaging storyteller who answers all of the reader’s deepest thoughts, and even one’s that were only on the boundaries of our consciousness. All of my wonders about what baseball was like in the 19th century were answered and I was continually amazed at how Cy Young successfully adapted during his 22 years of professional baseball - including the legality of throwing overhand, extension of the pitching distance, rising of the pitchers mound, increasing the shape and size of home plate, implementation of the foul strike rule, and somehow finding a way to pitch over 700 complete games until his mid-40s.

Possibly the greatest aspect of this biography is the fact that Browning is not afraid to speculate and draw educated conclusions on the subject matter, as well as looking at several varying possibilities and viewpoints as to what and why something happened. Judging by the extensiveness of the bibliography, I tend to believe that every ounce of source material concerning Cy Young was utilized and carefully analyzed by the author, and then elegantly presented in this final work. One reading strategy that I failed to perform until the last chapter but which I highly encourage everyone else to do would be to follow along with the dozens of endnotes featured throughout the book, as many of these provide further information on the individual points the author made. Finally, Browning is fantastic at re-creating Cy Young - his every motion and movement on the pitching mound - in the mind of the reader. Few, if any, biographers take the time to describe how these nineteenth century ballplayers learned and perfected their craft. So often and so beautifully, this author goes in-depth, step-by-step on how Cy Young likely would have graced baseball fields for over 20 years. I can only wish that more biographies would follow this same style!

From a baseball fan’s point of few, Cy Young’s statistics will always leave me astounded. 511 pitching wins (477 of which were complete games), 749 complete games, 76 shutouts, and 3 no hitters - including the American League’s first perfect game. Now, having read the authoritative biography on “The Grand Old Man of Baseball”, I am even more impressed and convinced of his all-time greatness, especially considering his high-moral character. Though Cy Young had a tendency to live a private life, even during the prime of his career, it was incredibly satisfying to read one of his few surviving quotes: “I probably won more games than you’ll ever see.” Now ain’t that the damnedest truth I have ever heard in my entire life!

If there was ever a biography I would recommend to readers who wish to learn more about the (pre) Dead-ball Era but do not wish to be bored by the (lack of) subject material and the historian’s academic writing style, this book HANDS DOWN is the book for you!