Boston Globe Put its Imprimatur in 2004 Behind Alumnuss Ted Williams Book While Snubbing the Definitive Book on Popular, Fellow Boston HOF'er Mike "King" Kelly

In an example of turning history on its head, the books and sports departments of the once-honorable Boston Globe several times each touted a 2004 Ted Williams baseball book by one of its living, former writers, Leigh Montville, through serializing, reviewing and occasional plugging. At the same time, the Globe has entirely ignored an indisputably definitive 2004 book about another Boston Hall of Famer, Mike ''King'' Kelly, who late, legendary Globe columnist Harold Kaese called ''probably the most popular player in all of Boston baseball history.'' A plausible reason why the Globe, for the past decade, has probably shunned Kelly, who played in Boston mainly for the National League and Players League, is because he would drive a hole through its manipulation of the citys long baseball history to filter everything through the Red Sox.

Arlington, VA (PRWEB) December 1, 2004 -- In an example of turning history on its head, the books and sports departments of the once-honorable Boston Globe several times each touted a 2004 Ted Williams baseball book by one of its living, former writers, Leigh Montville, through serializing, reviewing and occasional plugging.

At the same time, the Globe has entirely ignored an indisputably definitive 2004 book about another Boston Hall of Famer, Mike "King" Kelly, who late, legendary Globe columnist Harold Kaese called "probably the most popular player in all of Boston baseball history."

A plausible reason why the Globe, for the past decade, has shunned the theatrical Kelly, who played in Boston mainly for the National League and Players League, is because he would drive a hole through its manipulation of the citys long baseball history to now filter everything through the Red Sox.

Kaese, a recipient of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1976, wrote his superlative about Kelly in his book The Boston Braves, 1871-1953, which was reprinted in 2004 by Northeastern University Press. In 2001, Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy called Kaese and Peter Gammons the Globe's "beat writers of the century."

In addition to not mentioning the Kaese reprint through the first 11 months of 2004, the Globe has never mentioned a 1996 Kelly biography that won the Casey Award for baseball book of the year.

While the Globe has been snubbing significant books that relate to the city's 77-year-run as a National League city, 1876 to 1952, it has been touting Red Sox books left and right. Judging by the largely summary or silent rejections of his pitches to five departments of the Globe (books, sports, features, arts and city, two of which, sports and arts, were sent and confirmed their receipt of the book), 2004 Kelly biographer Howard W. Rosenberg believes that various Globe editors continue to turn a blind eye to the city's true baseball history and have conveniently held it against him that his book is self-published (Montville's Williams book is from a major publisher that has large advertising and publicity budgets). Rosenberg also believes that the Globe did not want to do anything to rain on the parade of "one of their living own" who is carrying the mantle of the Red Sox.

The Globe also showed no interest when presented with the following historical first, which Rosenberg repeatedly touted in e-mails to Globe reporters and editors. In 1888, the Globe's John "Jack" Drohan wrote the first book-length biography of a U.S. professional team athlete, and the subject was Kelly.

In the twentieth century to today (including in the 1996 Kelly book, which erroneously credited Jacob Morse of the Boston Herald as Kellys ghostwriter), Jack Drohan has hardly received historical notice. Also as of 1888, Jack's brother William was a Globe writer, and Jack and William had two famous nephews. One of the two is also a John "Jack" Drohan, who covered Boston American and National League baseball for several decades in the twentieth century and who has an entry in Michael Shatzkin's 1990 reference book The Ballplayers. The other nephew is Benny Drohan, composer of one of Boston's most famous songs, "Southie is My Home Town." Descendants of Benny Drohan still live in Dorchester, Mass., the same town outside Boston where Benny's uncles grew up.

To maximize sales, well-known publishers like the one of the 2004 Williams book (Doubleday) naturally favor the Red Sox over the city's old-time Beaneaters and Braves, as its National League teams were mainly called, and the 20th century over the 19th. As one might expect, current and recent Globe writers have devoted their Boston baseball books to the city's American League history (and typically can bank on, in their publicity campaigns, multiple plugs of their Red Sox books on the pages of the Globe). Instead of using the latter months of the year to mention any 2004 Beaneaters- and Braves-related books, the Globe is now plugging 2005 Red Sox titles, including by current and former staffers.

Kelly has also been shut out of the Globe's new DVD, available for $19.99 by calling 877-GLOBE-DVD, called "Boston's Greatest Sports Stories: Beyond the Headlines." According to the promotional literature, more than 600 photographs were considered and apparently none of Kelly was selected, despite a collection of them at the Boston Public Library. A few 19th-century moments are featured, which deal with the Boston Marathon and ''boxing greats with a Boston-area heritage,'' such as John L. Sullivan.

The modern-day books on Kelly that the Globe has never mentioned are a 2004 one, Cap Anson 2: The Theatrical and Kingly Mike Kelly: U.S. Team Sport's First Media Sensation and Baseball's Original Casey at the Bat, and a 1996 one, Martin Appel's Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike 'King' Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar, which was separately released as a paperback in 1999. The 1996 book is written in a popular style while the 2004 book, released in hardcover only, is written in a definitive style.

In his legacy, Kelly stacks up well against Williams, among those who know baseball history in its totality:

1. His February 1887 purchase by Boston from Chicago, for a then-record price of $10,000 (about $200,000 in today's dollars), was an early landmark moment in baseball that landed on the front page of the Globe. It could have appeared in the Globe's DVD to complement 1882 and 1892 moments heralding John L. Sullivan and an 1897 one about the Boston Marathon.

2. In 1888, as a result of his fame, Kelly became the first player to be paid a lot of money to appear on stage in a bit part. He got the role through playwright Charles Hoyt, a prominent member of the Boston Elks, a philanthropic organization that Kelly was invited to join - and which remains a vibrant part of Boston. In a baseball context, the Boston Elks were roasted in a 2002 book for having had a racist past in relation to Red Sox history: Howard Bryant's Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (which also won the Casey Award for baseball book of the year). In the 19th century, the Elks were a magnet for leading members of the theatrical profession and for some of the best-known players, and no baseball-player Elk through 1900 was more famous than Kelly. Rosenbergs Kelly book is also the definitive presentation of baseball's ties to the theater through 1900, with Drew Barrymores great-grandfather Maurice among the featured actor-fans.

3. An expression based on his prowess in sliding, "Slide, Kelly, Slide," became the title of a song in 1889, a common expression as a byword for impending danger, and the title of an MGM silent movie in 1927.

4. He is the most noted possible model for the title character in the poem "Casey at the Bat," a poem that Boston schoolchildren were reciting as of a few years ago (according to a finding by Tim Wiles, research director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame). None other than the New York Times, on March 31, 2004, mentioned Kelly in an A Section article (Katie Zezima, "Mudville Journal; In 'Casey' Rhubarb, 2 Cities Cry 'Foul!'"). Background about the poem, including a reference to Kelly, can be read at http://www.joslinhall.com/casey_at_the_bat.htm.

In the marketplace of ideas outside the Globe, the 2004 Kelly biography received prominent mentions in January 2004 on the heels of the release of the Pete Rose book, My Prison Without Bars. For its appendix detailing more than 160 regular-season bets in early baseball by Kelly and others, the Kelly book was mentioned by the Associated Press and in USA Today. Also, a Kelly reference was mentioned by Howard Bryant in the Boston Herald and the author was interviewed, along with a former commissioner of baseball and noted author Eliot Asinof, on the syndicated National Public Radio show, "Only a Game," by WBUR-Boston host Bill Littlefield. Littlefield also reviewed 2004 baseball books for the Globe and apparently would have been barred by Globe rules from mentioning Kelly. Through his NPR hat, Littlefield did receive a copy of the Kelly book, according to an NPR producer.

In November 2004, Globe ombudsman Chris Chinlund responded to a complaint that closely tracks this news release. Chinlund said he could not account for the reactions of various departments of the paper and instead focused narrowly on its book review policy: "Additionally, it's hard to make the case that your book has been ignored in favor of Leigh Montville's book because the two are not comparable: Montville's has a major publisher and yours is self-published. It may strike you as unfair but in the world of journalism books that are self-published historically do not command the same attention, as you yourself noted in your email to me." A follow-up note to Chinlund's reply, e-mailed twice to Globe managing editor Martin Baron, including once through a personal assistant who acknowledged its receipt, and a courtesy copy sent to the Globe's publisher, Richard Gilman, did not elicit a response.

In his other experience with newspapers in rectifying or correcting the historical record, Kelly biographer Rosenberg has watched in amazement, for 18 months, as no New York-area daily newspaper has acted on his chapter-and-verse correction of the count of captains in New York Yankees history. In June 2003, the Yankees had announced Derek Jeter - one of the most recognizable figures in baseball today - as their 11th and the New York Daily News in particular went wild in printing pictures and short biographies of the prior 10. The actual count is more like 14 or 15, including missing a pair of Hall of Famers. (It is worth noting that the Daily News in 2002 printed a splendid 1,000-word feature on the association of Kelly baseball contemporary Cap Anson with playwright Hoyt, which could be easily replicated by substituting Kelly for Anson.)

In May 2004, Rosenberg watched in amazement as his e-mail and fax to the Boston Herald resulted in a denial over the phone of any error after the Herald on May 10 stated, "Unlike the Yankees, who have a storied collection of team captains, the Red Sox have had only a handful of captains in their long history." According to Rosenberg, whose expertise on captains was the main focus of his first book, the count of Red Sox captains is more on the order of 17, and his e-mail and fax cited chapter and verse. That first book, a 2003 release, was Cap Anson 1: When Captaining a Team Meant Something: Leadership in Baseball's Early Years. Anson was Kelly's captain-manager in Chicago before Kelly's sale to Boston.

"Kelly may not be a household name today, but he once was in Boston, as was the likes of contemporaries such as President Grover Cleveland," Rosenberg declares. "But just because huge figures in baseball history are not so regarded today, because of amnesia, or worse, does not mean that newspapers should be in the business of erasing history."

Contact Information:

Howard W. Rosenberg

1111 Arlington Boulevard

Number 235 West

Arlington, Virginia 22209

703-841-9523

Articles that critically mention the 2004 Kelly bio or provided the hook for a feature story include:

1. San Francisco Chronicle (available at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/19/SPGR58A6JS1.DTL)

2. St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press (available at www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/entertainment/8606294.htm)

3. New York Sun, September 15, 2004 (available on Lexis-Nexis: Allen Barra roasted the Williams book as "disappointing'' while calling the 2004 Kelly one "quirky and immensely readable.")

4. Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, August 22, 2004 (available on Lexis-Nexis: John Clayton's feature on playwright Charles Hoyt, which mentioned his ties to Kelly's longtime captain-manager in Chicago, Cap Anson)

5. Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger (available at http://ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2004/07/10/life/life05.txt)

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