Before the Ivy

""If you like the Chicago Cubs and thoroughly researched and well-written books, then you're going to dig Before the Ivy. Pernot weaves all kinds of information and insight into this lively early history of this once-great and championship-riddled organization, the now World Series-deficient Chicago Cubs.""--Carson Cunningham, co-editor of Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870-1945 ""Long-suffering Cubs fans will take great pleasure from this delicious account of the late 19th and early 20th century Chicago National Leaguers before Wrigley Field, when the Cubs were perennial contenders, and mounted some of the most powerful teams in all of baseball history. Laurent Pernot gives us thoughtful portraits of baseball greats Al Spalding, Mike ""King"" Kelly, Adrian ""Cap"" Anson--and takes us deep inside the careers and rivalries of the famous combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. This book will warm the hearts of Cub fans in the long winter of their losing near-century at beautiful, unlucky Wrigley Field.""--Warren Goldstein, author of Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball and (with Elliott Gorn) A Brief History of American Sports ""Nicely written and quite lively. A good, engaging narrative, with some fine storytelling about a subject that many are passionate about.""--Elliott Gorn, author of The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prizefighting in America