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PUBLIC BONEHEAD, PRIVATE HERO:
THE REAL LEGACY OF BASEBALL’S FRED MERKLE
By Mike Cameron
This Edition: Paperback
Publication Date: February 2010
Our Price: $20
Availability: February 2010
Order Your Copy Now
Description:
Baseball fans of all ages will love this enlightening book. Public Bonehead, Private Hero presents:
- Merkle controversy in baseball’s most historic year: Why was the Merkle game a huge story in 1908?.
- America’s Cultural Centerpiece Examined: What was America like in 1908? What was baseball like in the era before
radio and TV?
- Muckraking and Merkle: How an intelligent and sensitive man was scapegoated for life.
- Redemption: Surviving through decades of humiliation both, how Merkle’s name was finally redeemed.
Public Bonehead, Private Hero is a great American story of baseball’s Fred Merkle, who was at the confluence of
Progressive Era history and baseball legend. The book sets the stage historically and then recounts the most
famous play in baseball history. A young New York Giant, Fred Merkle, walks off the base path after the apparent
end of a hotly contested game only to be ruled out later on a rarely enforced technicality. The Giants cried foul.
The press focused all of its muckraking venom on the unfortunate Fred Merkle and christened him “bonehead” for the
remainder of his life, insuring his fame as baseball’s number one scapegoat.
Public Bonehead, Private Hero reveals how baseball fans and the press never tired of recounting the “bonehead episode”
and seeing Merkle relive the ignominy. The book discloses that the cartoon character that was Fred Merkle in the public
eye was the opposite of the sensitive, intelligent man who went on with his life and career with courage and determination.
Who was Fred Merkle and how his story resonates with our own struggles is the heart and soul of this new work by journalist
and Merkle fan Mike Cameron.
Read an Excerpt
Product Details:
Public Bonehead, Private Hero,
Sporting Chance Press
ISBN: 978-09819242-1-1
200 pages, paperback,
February 2010
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