num_pages: 384
description:  In 1884 Providence Grays pitcher Charles Old Hoss Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine gamesmore than anyone in major-league history ever had before or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series. Fifty-nine in '84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil Wara brutal bloody sport played barehanded the profession of uneducated hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win. It is the tale too of the woman Radbourn loved Carrie Stanhope the alluring proprietress of a boarding-house with shady overtones a married lady who was said to have personally known every man in the National League. Wonderfully entertaining Fifty-nine in '84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating little-known era of the national pastime. 
language: English
title: Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
publisher: Smithsonian