#38: The Original Curse: Did the Cubs Throw the 1918 World Series by Sean Deveney

McGraw Hill, 2010: 242 pages

I come from a long line of Cubs fans. Stout, broad-shouldered midwestern people who love a team that has not been to the World Series since 1945. My grandmother died in 1993 at the age of 80. The last time the Cubs won a World Series, their best pitcher was Mordecai Peter Centennial "Three Finger" Brown and my grandmother would not be born for another 53 months. I rejected this maudlin loyalty and became a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. The Pirates have not posted a winning record since 1992, so maybe the family is cursed.

But, being a Cubs fan is all about curses. The black cat in 1969, Tim Flannery/Steve Garvey in 1984. The Billy Goat in 1945. Sean Deveney, based on good original research, asks the question, "What if the Cubs caused this curse by throwing the World Series?" It is a good question, and Deveney tackles it with a good deal of wit and knowledge. Of course, the real curse here is the Curse of the Bambino: the Red Sox won the series in 1918, sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees the next year. and did not win again until 2004.

Baseball in the first two decades of the 20th century was dominated by pitching and gambling. Pitchers such as the aforementioned Three Finger Brown, Walter Johnson, Rube Waddell and Christy Mathewson posted incredible statistics. In the 1905 World Series, Mathewson won three games, all of them shutouts. On the other hand, ballplayers caroused with "sports", men who operated in the shadowy realm of pseudo-legal gambling. The most nefarious ball player was Hal Chase. On at least two occasions (one documented by Deveney), Chase took to his first base position with several fans chanting "Hal, what's the odds?" Chase was deeply involved in the 1919 World Series fix by the Chicago White Sox, and circumstantially involved in the would be 1918 fix.

Deveney argues that the Cubs threw the 1918 world series, thereby clearing the way for the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. The difference was in the execution. The Black Sox were blatant about it, as Mathewson and reporter Hugh Fullerton noticed during the series. One of Deveney's compelling arguments in this text is that the baseball establishment paid no attention whatsoever. It can (and has) been argued that the only reason the story came out at all was because of the overall hatred for American League president Ban Johnson and the investigation into a game fixing scheme by members of the 1920 New York Giants. While Eliot Asinof's book Eight Men Out makes Sox owner Charles Comiskey an ogre and a cheapskate, it sometimes ignores the fact that gambling was rife in baseball during the period. Deveney does not shy from this, and this makes the book worthwhile.

Deveney details movements of players accused of fixing games and delves into newly found papers in the Chicago History Museum. While my jury is out on Deveney's conclusion, the book is an excellent resource on the culture of baseball in 1918. With war looming, why not try to make a few more bucks on the side? Check out this book and find out.

#37: LZ-'75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour by Stephen Davis

Gotham Books 2010, 217 pages

I read Stephen Davis' most well known book, Hammer of the Gods, back in high school. There, along with  every other 15-19 year old male, I went through the "Zep" phase. I could quote most songs, staunchly defended John Bonham as "the greatest drummer of all time" and thought Robert Plant was a D-Bag because of the Honeydrippers. I thrilled to the accounts of groupies being violated by dead sharks (made famous by the Frank Zappa song, "Mud Shark"), TVs being thrown off balconies and general mayhem. Zep were, no doubt, misogynistic, booze addled creepshows, but....chicks loved them!

That book caused a lot of consternation with the surviving members of Zeppelin because Davis got most of his info from the sleazebag that sold heroin to the band and the groupies. The 1975 tour was the only one that Davis went on with Zeppelin, and he says at the beginning of LZ-'75 that "around then (2007) I began to look through my notes of the '75 tour" which he claims he had not looked at for 30 years. (4-5) Maybe Plant and Paige were right when they claimed he did not know what he was writing about in 1985.

Anyway, perhaps it is because I am old. Perhaps it is because I am much more fascinated by the likes of Bukka White of the original "Shake 'em on Down" or The Jeff Beck Group or The Yardbirds. Perhaps I agree with Pete Townshend's assertion that Zep was "just not a very good band." Well, not really. Zeppelin III is still one of my favorite albums, and "The Ocean" from Houses of the Holy is still one of my favorite songs. While this book presents much about the trials of Arena Rock Gods of the 1970s, there is too much of the author. I am on the waiting list at my local library for a copy of Davis's book about the Rolling Stones, Old Gods Almost Dead, and I might change my mind.

Throughout, the author cannot mention any woman without some comment on her "attributes". The name dropping is almost as bad; I mean, who could not be reduced to swooning over "Mrs. Todd Rundgren". You know who that is, right kids? Bebe Buell? Ring a bell? In Playboy back in the 1970s? Well known to most CBGBs bands? Friend of Patti Smith? Wait a minute...what's that? Who the fuck is Todd Rundgren? You commies.

Zep was awash in "chicks", "groupies", "bimbos", "slutty girls" and "local talent", as well as heroin, coke, liquor, kimonos, bowler hats. Bonham was usually awash in stomach ailments, gas and unwanted turds. Could it be because he was drinking nearly a fifth of whiskey a day? In one chapter, entitled the "Prairie Princess", Davis scores a groupie who "looked like Mrs. Nebraska, only more wholesome." (138). Awwwwwwwww, that makes me feel all warm. She was pissed not to get Plant, but had to settle for a Feisty Rock Critic writing for....The Atlantic Monthly? She put out, but....The Atlantic Monthly? Were The Carpenters busy? Was The Kingston Trio on hiatus?

I kept track through this book about which shows Davis said were "shit hot". I took this to mean warm to the touch, somewhat mushy, steamy and more than a little uncomfortable to be around because of the stink. There were about 6 or seven, most toward the end of the tour. One cool item: Zep played on a good night for 3-4 hours. Yes, yes, there was the obligatory 30 minute drum solo on "Moby Dick", the obligatory John Paul Jones 20 minute keyboard jazz experiment, and Jimmy Page playing a guitar with a violin bow, rubber chicken, his own penis and a cast of Aleister Crowley's johnson. All this could be yours for...$10. Nowadays, that is about $35, or roughly $15 less than most Sheryl Crow Concerts.

I don't know. It is easy to make fun of bands like Zeppelin for their antics and hotel destruction, but they were an incredibly influential band. And, like it or not, Page, Jones and Bonham were very strong musicians. Plant's voice by '75 could not hit high notes because of throat surgery in 1973, but he could still belt it out. I would have liked more about the music and less about the author, who manages to track down an old girlfriend "who he never saw again" (155). This book, like many on the subject of Old Gods Long Dead, is a maudlin exercise. I wasn't there, and one gets the feeling through most of the book that the boys in the band did not want to be there either. The excess and the drinking and wanton sex were for the entourage.