smoky joe wood
Reviewed by Robert S. Brown, School of Business, Mount Ida College
27 august 2015 archive
A recent article by Rob Neyer listed the oldest living players for each Major League Baseball franchise. It reminded me of the introduction to Gerald Wood's biography of Smoky Joe Wood, where the author describes a party held in 1985 for the then 95 year old baseball legend. At that point the pitching hero of the 1912 World Series Champion Red Sox had outlived most of his baseball peers, yet still drew a big crowd to witness the awarding of an honorary doctorate from Yale University. It was one of the final highlights of a lifetime full of adventures for Smoky Joe, who would pass away a few months later.
Wood has been a featured subject in several works, including Ritter's The Glory of their Times, but this is the first book-length biography of Smoky Joe. Author Gerald Wood, no relation to Smoky Joe Wood as discussed in the epilogue of the text, has created a detailed and insightful tracing of the long life of one of the early twentieth century's greatest pitchers. Wood details Joe's start playing town baseball in Ouray, Colorado in the late 1890s, and follows Wood's rise through the minor leagues (including a stint with the Kansas City Bloomer Girls in 1906) and, beginning with the 1908 Red Sox, Wood's career in the Major Leagues. Wood also describes Wood's post-baseball career, including his stint as the longtime coach of the Yale baseball team from 1922-1942.
However, this is not just a baseball player biography. Gerald Wood, through his interactions with Wood's relatives and full access to the extensive family archives, is able to place Joe Wood's baseball story in the context of a fascinating family history. Joe's father, a lawyer, newspaper publisher, and politician, was also an adventurer, dragging his family west in search of gold and silver prospecting opportunities. World War I and II had major impacts on Joe's family and the players he worked with. Joe interacted with many of the Major League's biggest stars, including Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb, and helped a young Babe Ruth adjust to pitching in the Majors.
Gerald Wood writes with the quality one would expect of an English professor. The story is well organized and researched. Extensive citations are backed by almost thirty pages of notes. The author combines primary and secondary print sources as well as interviews and archival research to support his detailed examination of Wood's baseball career and his family history. The resulting book is not just a biography, but serves as a history of early baseball and the development of 20th century society as a whole. Wood's fine efforts were recognized with the 2014 Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal, awarded by the Society for American Baseball Research [SABR] for the best baseball book or biography published that year.
Wood, Gerald C. (2013). Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 336 pages, plus 28 pages of additional notes, 10 pages of bibliography and an index. $34.95 list price.
Copyright © 2015 by Robert S. Brown