Baseball's Peerless Semipros: The Brooklyn Bushwicks of Dexter Park (review)

Abstract

Thomas Barthel. Baseball's Peerless Sernipros: Brooklyn Bushwicks of Dexter Park. Harworth, NJ: St. Johann Press, 2009. 304 pp. Cloth, $29.95. In the last paragraph of his forward Baseball's Peerless Semipros, Jack Lang, past president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, closes by suggesting that Tom Barthel, who spent years researching his subject, will take you on a roller coaster ride through that grand and almost forgotten (vi). Those words prove be true, though perhaps not in the manner originally intended by Lang. There is no question that Barthel spent countless hours researching the era of semipro baseball, as this is his second book on that time period in the last three years (Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games, 1901-1962 was published by McFarland in 2007). And yet, despite a wealth of interesting historical anecdotes--drawn almost exclusively from newspaper box scores and articles--Jack Lang's aforementioned roller coaster ride comes not so much from the thrills and stars of baseball's golden era, but rather from marginal writing, poor documentation, and little evidence that the text was edited before publication. Baseball's Peerless Semipros tells the story of Max Rosner's Brooklyn Bush-wicks, the strongest (and most profitable) semipro team in the first half of the twentieth century. Barthel chronologically orders the team's history into eight chapters covering varying time periods between 1918 and 1951, ending with a brief epilogue which covers the death of Rosner and the impact he had on the game. first chapter, The Beginning, offers a somewhat scattered, but detailed, history of the origins of baseball in Brooklyn. Barthel chronicles Max Rosner's assent from a young Jewish immigrant making cigars out of his garage, his fortuitous partnership with Manhattan booking agent and Inter-City Association organizer Nat Strong, who controlled when and where semipro teams played. Rosner first got into semipro baseball to boost his cigar business by sponsoring a team, the Paramounts, who in Paramount park in Williamsburg as well as other venues (6). Semipro clubs were most often named for the neighborhood they played in, and when Rosner formed the Bushwicks in 1913, they retained their Brooklyn identity despite moving Dexter Park, which was actually located in Queens on the Brooklyn border. Rosner understood that the best talent wins ballgames and that good teams draw bigger crowds, and so he continually poured his revenues back into player contracts and improvements his ballpark. Despite some annoying grammatical issues, the first chapter finishes fairly strong, leaving readers hungry for more. …