We figured we would. We always knew we were better than anybody in the National League, but always it came to that last link in autumn, when the Yankees would come in and take all the marbles. There was no explaining it. It just seems you played your heart out all year, and then they'd come up against the Yankees, and bam, they'd win the Series. The Glory of Their Times , ed.
Many aficionados regard The Glory of Their Times as the greatest baseball book.
It was essentially the first of the oral-history genre and remains the best, a wonderful portrait of baseball in the first 20 years of this century as told by the men who were there. Without implying comparison, I am reminded of Melville's Moby Dick . Indeed it is. It probably contains more information on the subject than any learned treatise written before or since. Nevertheless, any schoolboy knows that Moby Dick is not really about whaling.