The Glory of Their Times
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The Glory Of Their Times: The Story Of The Early Days Of Baseball Told By The Men Who Played It is a book, edited by Lawrence Ritter, telling the stories of early 20th century baseball. It is widely acclaimed as one of the great books written about baseball.
Ritter got the idea for the book in 1961 upon the death, at the age of 74, of Ty Cobb, who had been regarded by many observers as the greatest player in the game's history. He realized that those who played baseball in the early years of the 20th century were now old men, and he resolved to interview as many of them as he could in order to record their memories. Ritter travelled 75,000 miles to interview his subjects, sitting for hours listening to them tell their tales into his tape recorder. The book retells their stories in the first-person, as they were told to Ritter.
The interviews were made between 1962 and 1966, when the book was published. An enlarged edition was issued in 1984, with the additions of George Gibson, Babe Herman, Specs Toporcer, and Hank Greenberg. A vinyl album containing some of the actual recordings of the interviews was released in the 1970s. More recently, with the burgeoning popularity of books-on-tape, longer versions of the recordings have been released on audiocassette and CD.
The subjects are,
- Jimmy Austin
- Rube Bressler
- Al Bridwell
- Stan Coveleski
- Sam Crawford
- George Gibson
- Goose Goslin
- Hank Greenberg
- Heinie Groh
- Babe Herman
- Harry Hooper
- Davy Jones
- Sad Sam Jones
- Willie Kamm
- Tommy Leach
- Hans Lobert
- Rube Marquard
- Chief Meyers
- Lefty O'Doul
- Bob O'Farrell
- Edd Roush
- Fred Snodgrass
- Specs Toporcer
- Bill Wambsganss
- Paul Waner
- Joe Wood
Crawford, Greenberg, Roush and Waner were already members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Coveleski, Goslin, Hooper and Marquard would be elected after the book was published, and Goslin and Marquard would directly credit Ritter's book. Toporcer, who lived on until 1989, was the last survivor among the interviewees.
As part of Ritter's research, he interviewed many other ballplayers, baseball executives, and writers besides those who have chapters in his book. These individuals included Bill Veeck, Billy Werber, Benny Bengough, Marty McHale, Eliot Asinof, Fred Lieb, and George McBride.
A documentary for The Glory of Their Times was produced in 1977 by Ritter and Bud Greenspan showing a lot of the still photography used in the book, vintage film footage as well recordings from the audio tapes Ritter used in researching the book.
