The Unforgettable Season - G. H. Fleming

"The 1908 National League pennant race was without question the most exciting and dramatic battle of all time. Three teams, the Giants, the Cubs, and the Pirates, battled from start to finish, concluding the season with just one game separating them in the standings. The story of this race is like a Hall of Fame sprung to life, including John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown, and Honus Wagner. Yet the one name that truly stands out belongs to a young Giant rookie, Fred Merkle. His base-running blunder in a key game between the Giants and the Cubs cost the New Yorkers the pennant through an entirely unforeseeable set of circumstances that set off a near-riot in New York. More than mere history, The Unforgettable Season uses a judicious selection of newspaper stories to recreate the unforgettable season through the eyes and florid language of sportswriters of the day. With no film, TV, or radio accounts of the game to cloud readers' minds with facts, the newspaper writers had free reign to invent and embellish the larger-than-life figures and events of 1908. It is their efforts that make this book often unintentionally hilarious and unforgettable."
amazon

Honus Wagner - In dugout with bats

"... His fifth is a rather ordinary-looking volume, whose dust jacket is covered with old photographs of baseball players, with the rather ordinary title The Unforgettable Season. It is a day-by-day reconstruction of the 1908 season, as experienced by the New York Giants. Can you imagine anything more tedious - a day-by-day reconstruction of a 154-game baseball season? I couldn't - until I began reading it. At first, I found myself merely amused by the sports writing - the references to catchers as 'windpaddists,' outfielders as 'suburbanites,' star pitchers as 'stellar twirlers' and a burst of base hits as 'a bountiful bevy of beautiful bingles.' Or the description of the great Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, Honus Wagner, who tended to bowleggedness, as 'hiking for third as fast as his parenthetical pins would carry him.'"
NY Times