Death in the Strike Zone - by Thomas W Gilbert (Hardcover)

About the Book

"He threw the first fastball. The first curveball. He was baseball's first star-and its first tragedy. In Death in the Strike Zone, acclaimed historian Thomas W. Gilbert uncovers the forgotten life of James Creighton, the first American ballplayer to become a national sensation. On the eve of the Civil War, Creighton invented something utterly new in baseball - modern pitching. Creighton was so dominant, so mesmerizing, that the game had to rewrite the rulebook to catch up with him. He is the reason we have a strike zone. Then, in one fateful game he collapsed-and four days later, he was dead at the age of twenty-one. Was it a freak injury or was baseball somehow to blame? Was there a cover-up? Why has Creighton been denied the credit he deserves? Death in the Strike Zone is part biography, part detective story, and part time machine. With vivid storytelling and groundbreaking research, Gilbert revives a vanished era of barehanded fielders, heroes and gamblers, and the strange, thrilling beginnings of America's pastime and sports stardom itself. Death in the Strike Zone is a remarkable journey into the past that will keep you on the edge of your seat and profoundly change how you see the game of baseball"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"A fascinating must-read for baseball history buffs."--Publishers Weekly

He threw the first fastball. The first curveball. He was baseball's first star--and its first tragedy.

In Death in the Strike Zone, acclaimed historian Thomas W. Gilbert uncovers the forgotten life of James Creighton, the first American ballplayer to become a national sensation. On the eve of the Civil War, Creighton invented something utterly new in baseball - modern pitching. Creighton was so dominant, so mesmerizing, that the game had to rewrite the rulebook to catch up with him. He is the reason we have a strike zone. Then, in one fateful game he collapsed--and four days later, he was dead at the age of twenty-one.

Was it a freak injury or was baseball somehow to blame? Was there a cover-up? Why has Creighton been denied the credit he deserves? Death in the Strike Zone is part biography, part detective story, and part time machine. With vivid storytelling and groundbreaking research, Gilbert revives a vanished era of barehanded fielders, heroes and gamblers, and the strange, thrilling beginnings of America's pastime and sports stardom itself.

Death in the Strike Zone is a remarkable journey into the past that will keep you on the edge of your seat and profoundly change how you see the game of baseball.

Review Quotes

Praise for Death in the Strike Zone

"A fascinating must-read for baseball history buffs."

--Publishers Weekly

"Tom Gilbert has invented a brilliant new kind of baseball book, a mystery biography that's a history of an incandescent American folk hero, a masterful study of the physics of pitching, and a survey of the wild, weird 19th century. Because Gilbert is an expert on still-relevant topics like gambling, pitching mechanics, and baseball economics, Death in the Strike Zone is endlessly enlightening. Creighton died young, but I've never read anything about 19th century baseball that's so alive."

--John W. Miller, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Last Manager

"Jim Creighton was baseball's first hero, changing the nature of the game even more than Babe Ruth. Tom Gilbert's eye-opening biography celebrates the pitcher's exceedingly brief life--baseball killed him--and unveils long-held mysteries. Death in the Strike Zone provides a peephole into the sporting past of Brooklyn and New York when each was a city all its own."

--John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball

"With a zest for bringing 19th-century rogues and rowdies to life that recalls Lucy Sante's Low Life, Thomas Gilbert's Death in the Strike Zone grapples with the paradox that was James Creighton, at once baseball's first star and yet practically a cipher thanks to his premature death. Gilbert expertly unravels the mysteries around Creighton--where he came from, how he dominated hitters and set amateur baseball on a course towards professionalization, how he met such a tragic end--fleshing out our knowledge of an important, and underappreciated figure in the development of the national pastime."

--Jay Jaffe, Senior Writer, FanGraphs

Praise for Thomas W. Gilbert's How Baseball Happened

Winner of the Casey Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year

"Explores the conditions and factors that begat the game in the 19th century and turned it into the national pastime. The book explains how almost all conventional wisdom about baseball's origins and formative years is wrong. A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat."
--Wall Street Journal

"Best gift book of the year! Gilbert digs deep into baseball history to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the origins of the American pastime. He contends that neither Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright nor Henry Chadwick fathered the game but rather it was originated by a group of amateurs in New York City."
--New York Post

"Baseball has fabricated its own history several times over, but its origin story matters. In this entertaining narrative, Gilbert shows how the game was developed by amateurs, in part to introduce healthier habits and the sporting life in a country that didn't really have either."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Brilliantly gathers hidden treasure long buried in newspaper accounts and diaries to present a rich and nuanced picture of American baseball as it grew and blossomed. Along the way, he explodes myths that have long shaped our understanding of this great game. This is a tart and funny trip through the raucous and aspiring culture that shaped baseball, with its volunteer firefighters, urban professionals, bloodstained butchers, and brawling gamblers."
--Edward Achorn, author of Every Drop of Blood: The Summer of Beer and Whiskey and Fifty-nine in '84

"A lively and often funny account of how baseball became THE national sport. At once irreverent and loving, Gilbert explodes baseball's founding myths while painting a rich portrait of a forgotten America. For baseball lovers and history buffs alike."
--Robert Kagan, author of The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

"A brilliant new approach to our game and its author tells a hundred stories you haven't heard before."
--John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball

About the Author

Thomas W. Gilbert is the author of How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed (winner of the Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year) and many other books, including Baseball and the Color Line, Roberto Clemente, and Playing First. From his Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stoop he can throw a baseball to the former site of the Manor House tavern, where members of the Eckford Baseball Club enjoyed a post-game drink or two in the 1850s.