SLIDE KELLY SLIDE by Marty Appel Easton Press Full Leather Brand New Sealed
$49.00
Skip to product information
Slide Kelly Slide
by
Marty Appel
Published
by
Easton Press
Brand New Sealed in Publisher's Plastic
Condition: Brand new, sealed in publisher's plastic, dark green full leather edition. Standard Easton Press quality with full leather covers, gold page edges, decorated end pages and gold decorations on the front, back and spine as well as silk moire end pages. The plastic wrap is unbroken and corners are bump free. There are full page b&w illustrations throughout. The book size is 5.75 by 9 inches tall, 211 pages. Pictures of an opened copy are for display only. You will receive a brand new never opened copy.
About Easton Press Books:
Bound in genuine premium leather
Intricate gilt stamped cover designs
The page ends are gilded in 22-karat gold
22-karat gold-stamped spine accents
Distinctive raised spine hubs
With satin ribbon page marker
Printed on archival-quality paper
Smyth-sewn pages
Illustrated end pages
Easton Press leather edition of Marty Appel's "Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike "Kelly" Kelly, Baseball's First Superstar," a Collector's edition, one of the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME series, published in 1998. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has decorative paper end leaves, satin book marker, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilt on three edge---in FINE condition. Michael Joseph "King" Kelly, who lived from 1857 – 1894, also commonly known as "$10,000 Kelly," was an American outfield, catcher, and manager in various professional American baseball leagues. He spent the majority of his 16-season playing career with the Chicago White Stockings and the Boston Beaneaters. Kelly was a player-manager three times in his career before his retirement in 1893. He is also often credited with helping to popularize various strategies as a player such as the hit and run, the hook slide, and the catcher's practice of backing up first base. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. Kelly's hook slide was special, and players copied it. Kelly could have been the first to foul off lots of pitches on purpose. Doing so was a top trick of some Baltimore players of the 1890s. At the turn of the century, that trick was defused when all foul balls began counting as strikes." Kelly's autobiography "Play Ball" was published while he was with the Beaneaters in 1888, the first autobiography by a baseball player. Kelly also became a vaudeville performer during his playing career, first performing in Boston where he would recite the now-famous baseball poem "CASEY AT THE BAT," sometimes butchering it. Kelly's baserunning innovations are also the subject of the hit 1889 song entitled "Slide, Kelly, Slide" and a 1927 comedy film of the same name. "It is not an exaggeration to say that he enjoyed a celebrity comparable to Babe Ruth, relative to his era. Kelly was no scholar, but neither was he illiterate. He was no churchgoer, yet he enjoyed a warm relationship with evangelist Billy Sunday---the former baseball player and teammate. When Kelly was sold from Chicago to Boston for $10,000, the event rocked baseball. Kelly transcended baseball and made news in finance, literature, art, theater, music, and pop culture. Kelly's drinking contributed to an early diminutization of his talents, if not an early end to his life. Children born in the 1850s would read no tales of great sports heroes. Kelly was born in 1857 when James Buchanan was president in Troy, New York, the son of Irish immigrants. The Kelly family moved to WASHINGTON, D.C. where young Mike became interested in the sport. The National League had been born in 1876 while Kelly was sharpening his skills in the sandlots of Patterson, New Jersey. At age 19, Kelly took a job at one of Patterson's silk mills to learn the weaver's trade. Kelly began playing in the National League in the 1870s. He was 5'10 and weighed about 157 pounds. In 1879, Kelly played before a good-size crowd in BOSTON, batting five times, belting two doubles, a triple and his first major league home run. In 1880, Kelly had a "certain swagger" that went with self-achievement. "There was no trick in baseball that Kel didn't know," wrote Maclean Kennedy, an early baseball historian. Playing for the White Stocking who wore handsome white uniforms with a bold CHICAGO across their chests, every player had a mustache, with Kelly's being perhaps the 'bushiest' of them all. Off the field, with a little money in his pocket, handsome, hairy chested Kelly was becoming a fashion plate, dressing in pointed patent leather, high-button shoes and wearing a high silk hat. Kelly married AGNES HEDIFEN and they enjoyed 13 years, childless until the last year. "He was a whole-souled, genial fellow with a host of friends, and but one enemy, that being himself. Time and again he boasted that he would never be broke, but money slipped through his fingers like the meshes of a fisherman's net, and he was as fond of whiskey as any representative of the Emerald Isle." Marty Appel has won an EMMY AWARD as executive producer of New York Yankee baseball.
SLIDE KELLY SLIDE by Marty Appel Easton Press Full Leather Brand New Sealed
$49.00