James Creighton is a fascinating figure in baseball history. Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero is a fascinating book, though it’s not quite the biography that it purports to be. Thomas W. Gilbert has woven an eminently fascinating tale. I breezed through it in a few days and enjoyed the experience, despite being left with the feeling that the book that the cover espouses is not the book that Gilbert wrote.
Gilbert does dig into the history of Creighton, both in life and death. However, that makes up a very small portion of the book. Instead, this would have been more aptly sold as a biography of Joe Leggett and a cursory look into the history of the Brooklyn Excelsiors. Creighton is, for large chunks of Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero, a secondary character. Gilbert spends far more time on the history and machinations of Leggett or the general history of the Excelsiors than he does on Creighton. It felt to me like there was some padding going on. There is, essentially, a really good 60 or so page biography of Creighton in Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero. The remaining 120-odd pages are a really good read, but they’re only tangentially about Creighton.
The amateur baseball era is a blind spot for me. It’s not a subject I’ve actively sought out, because, well, honestly, outside of the bare facts, it never seemed all that interesting to me. Gilbert deserves a lot of credit because he has made me interested in learning more about the Excelsiors, the National Association of Base Ball Players, Leggett, etc. He also gives an honest and compelling account of Creighton’s sporting life. The circumstances around his death aren’t so mysterious as they are very in line with the measures Henry Chadwick was known for taking in order to protect baseball. All the moving parts of Creighton’s life and death are present and make for a most compelling read.
To be crystal clear, I enjoyed Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero. It suffers from a lack of focus on its biographical subject. But, while that does take away from the book overall, it doesn’t make it any less of an engaging and interesting read. I enjoyed the time I spent with these players, and Gilbert has made me want to spend even more time with them. I can’t make any excuses for the framing of the book as a Creighton biography first and foremost, but don’t let the odd framing stop you from checking out a well-written, researched, and compelling look at amateur baseball in the 1860s.
Lead image courtesy of David R. Godine
