Summary Of The Summer Of Beer And Whiskey By Edward Achorn

Edward Achorn’s “The Summer of Beer and Whiskey” highlights the obvious difference between the game of baseball during the late 19th century and not only the sport, but the massive industry, that we know as Major League Baseball today in the 21st. However, through certain featured people and similar business models, the book outlines how the innovators of the sport turned a sport on the decline into the great American pastime. Achorn tells readers that the transformation came from elements beyond the diamond, and relied heavily on the spectator aspect of the game. The year is 1880, and baseball, once a thriving and popular new sport on a meteoric fast track to prominence during the Civil War, was on a heavy waning run. Popularity was decreasing, and many thought that it was just a flash in the pan of American sporting culture. Six of the original eight baseball clubs folder at the time, and the financial status quo involved in the sport was almost nonexistent.
In an interview with NPR, Achorn said, “He would go into the clubhouse after games and sort of yell at players, 'Vy did you drop dat ball?' — You know, as if they did it on purpose. He didn't really understand all the finer points of the game. But he was a brilliant man. And he just made baseball honest, he made it fun, and he just made the game boom.” The man who could best be described as the personification of a cartoon character, with a incredibly thick German accent and bushy mustache, purchased the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1882 for just short of $2,000. In the past, von der Ahe made a consistent living off of a collection of beer gardens. He wanted to take that business model and inject it into his baseball club’s plan for