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THE CLEVELAND INDIAN: The Legend of King Saturday, by Luke Smith, The Smith, 285 pages, $24.95.
Expanding on the legend of Louis Sockalexis, the Penobscot Indian from Old Town who starred in national baseball a century ago, Luke Smith has woven an intricate tale about baseball, the American mood, and human pathos during the late 1890s.
In a well-detailed, well-written novel, Smith recreates the 1897 Cleveland Spiders, the team that fielded Cy Young among other players. King Saturday, a character who personifies Louis Sockalexis, joins the Spiders and displays his outstanding natural talent for baseball.
Smith relates the legend of King Saturday through the eyes and voice of Henry Harrison, the Spiders’ lawyer and an erstwhile and debonair man-about-town. Harrison encounters Saturday in a Pennsylvania bar, which the Indian and his teammates trash in a drunken revelry. Between the free-flowing liquor, the prostitutes, and the language, the reader quickly realizes that in this novel, the ballplayers and their hangers-on aren’t all lily white; they are people more accustomed to the seamier side of the tracks.
As the Spiders finish the 1897 season, Saturday establishes himself as a ballplayer par excellence. Then he disappears for the winter (and apparently returns to Maine), only to rejoin the team during spring training in Arkansas.
With America at war with Spain, Harrison relates the jingoistic patriotism the Spiders endure at many games during the 1898 season. Women, specifically a “proper” young lady from the right side of town and a sweet-hearted whore who works at the Gin Palace (a major locale in the novel), enter Saturday’s life. Harrison eventually loves both women, who unfortunately love Saturday more.
Baseball games played from Cleveland to Boston form the backdrop as King Saturday pursues a personal vendetta. In 1898, the “bosses” run everything, from the nation’s mines to the ball teams. There’s a demarcation line between management and labor. Harrison, for one, wants to cross that line and own a baseball team; Saturday, for another, wants revenge on certain men who live across that line from him.
As the novel rushes toward its conclusion, Saturday and Harrison bet for and against their team. Betting was legal then, and some players even threw games to make money. Tension builds as word leaks that the Spiders’ lawyer and best player are betting on the games; Saturday retreats to Indian Island, then reappears in Boston on July 4, 1898, and plays in an outstanding game.
From there, Saturday leaves the Spiders a final time. Always a step, maybe a week behind, Harrison chases him to recently liberated Cuba, across the gulf to Mexico, and finally back to the United States. Saturday gains legendary stature as he closes on his target, a man who betrayed his father.
During a dramatic confrontation in Leadville, Colo., Harrison learns what Saturday had intended to do all along. An amateur football games sets the last stage for The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday.
Luke Smith recreates the late 1890s in all its glory and debauchery, from the detailed descriptions that transform the Gin Palace into a real building to the interplay between Saturday, Harrison, and their women. Along the way, certain immemorable baseball games bring the sport to life. This book is must reading for diehard baseball fans, especially those sports who view the 1890s as a time of innocence.
The decade and its inhabitants were not innocents, as Smith relates in this fast-paced novel.
Brian Swartz is a NEWS advertising writer.
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