Forty years ago this month, the Chicago Cubs were on top of the baseball world, holding an eight-and-a-half-game lead and ready to cruise to their first pennant in more than forty years. But over the course of a few weeks, it all fell apart, with loss after loss culminating in one of the worst collapses in baseball history. The man at the helm of that disaster was the outspoken, cantankerous Leo Durocher, who always seemed to be on the scene of baseball’s most memorable moments throughout a fifty year career as a player or manager.
From riding the bench as a rookie with the ’27 Yankees, to breaking out as a hard-charging shortstop with the Gashouse Gang Cardinals in the 1930s, to managing the previously hapless Dodgers to their first World Series, to watching Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world” propel his Giants to the 1951 pennant, to, yes, that horrible Cubs collapse—Durocher saw it all, and in 1975 he told his side of these stories and more in Nice Guys Finish Last. Now the University of Chicago Press is bringing Durocher’s classic back into print for a new generation of baseball fans to enjoy. All the larger-than-life players, the action, and the drama—not to mention the fights and feuds—of baseball’s golden age come to life in Durocher’s inimitable voice, making this the perfect companion for summer’s perfect game.
Read the press release.