Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in tweets, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Charlie Murphy: The Iconoclastic Showman behind the Chicago Cubs (Nebraska, June 2022) by Jason Cannon.
About the Book:
In Charlie Murphy, Jason Cannon explores Murphy’s life both on and off the field, painting a picture of his meteoric rise and precipitous downfall. Readers will get to know the real Murphy, not the simplified caricature created by his contemporaries that has too frequently been perpetuated through the years, but the whirling dervish who sent the sport of baseball spinning and elevated Chicago to the center of the baseball universe.
A Word from the Author:
It is hard to believe that Charlie Murphy: The Iconoclastic Showman behind the Chicago Cubs recently turned one-year-old. Murphy won four pennants and two World Series titles during his ownership tenure of the Cubs from 1906 though 1913. The past twelve months have been an exhilarating ride punctuated by the recent garnering of the 2023 SABR Larry Ritter Book Award, an incredibly humbling honor. It has been gratifying to experience the warm reception critics and readers have given the book because I so deeply hoped that everyone would find Charlie Murphy to be as unique and engaging a person as I did.
I have had wonderful opportunities to share this book with a variety of audiences around the country. Last summer, the unofficial launch party of the book occurred inside Wrigley Field’s 1914 Club. Then the festivities moved upstairs where I had the special opportunity to talk about Murphy with members of the Cubs current ownership group, thereby linking the only stewards of the franchise who possess World Series rings 108 years apart.
In September, I received the opportunity to appear on WGN Midday News to discuss Charlie Murphy’s legacy with anchor Patrick Elwood. Murphy’s Ohio haunts proved to be equally as interested as Chicago in his story. The Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, along with the Clinton County Historical Society, extended generous invites for me to present Murphy’s story to their patrons. These were four incredible in-person events, especially on the heels of the pandemic that had eliminated so many of our face-to-face conversations. Additionally, I had the pleasure of speaking remotely with several Society for American Baseball Research chapters.
Writing a thorough biography is both a challenging and rewarding process. I spent nearly every day with Charlie and his coworkers for four years and still had a few unanswered questions remaining when I turned in the manuscript. However, lingering mysteries aside, promoting the book over the past year allowed me to retell my favorite stories about Murphy and reflect on the process of writing about a person’s life. It is a heavy responsibility, and I was driven to get his story as “right” as possible. I view the Ritter Award, along with the CASEY Award finalist nod, as acknowledgments from critics and readers that they, too, felt as though they had gotten to know the real Charlie Murphy and share in some of his adventures along the way. Playing a small role in connecting Murphy with them has been the most satisfying experience of all.
Awards:
2023 SABR Larry Ritter Book Award
Finalist for the 2022 CASEY Award
Reviews:
“Everything a great biography should be: impeccably researched, fair, eminently readable, and ultimately as satisfyingly instructive as having personally known the subject oneself.”—Spitball Magazine
“A sportswriter and publicist who bought the team with a loan, [Charlie Murphy] won the 1908 World Series that was the last the Cubs won until 2016, but also was relieved of ownership by National League colleagues because of his unorthodox style. This well-researched hardcover provides an intimate look inside the Dead Ball Era.”—Sports Collectors Digest
“It is a treasure trove of information and gives the reader a sense of the politics that occurred in baseball during the first two decades of the twentieth century.”—Bob D’Angelo, Sport in American History
“The biography is an overdue and important addition to baseball knowledge. As a quote from the long-defunct magazine McClure’s notes, ‘For a real wonder-story, the history of Charles W. Murphy outranks anything in baseball records.'”—David A. F. Sweet, Classic Chicago magazine
“This book is well-written and researched . . . easy to read and should be on the bookshelf of every baseball fan.”—Tom Knuppel, Knup Sports
“As for the complete story of Murphy, from his beginnings to his ownership of the Cubs and the fractured relationships at the time of his ouster, Cannon does a very good job of bringing him to life to the reader and illustrating an accurate picture of the business side of the game at that time.”—Lance Smith, Guy Who Reviews Sports Books
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