When the Dodgers were bridegrooms : Gunner McGunnigle and Brooklyn's back-to-back pennants of 1889 and 1890 /

Brooklyn's Gunner McGunnigle became "the only manager in baseball history to win consecutive pennants in two different major leagues," but how major were those leagues? In baseball (or, rather, "base ball") of the late 1880s, pitchers threw underhand, the players fielded barehanded, a strikeout was four strikes and Brooklyn's team was known as the Bridegrooms. Yet Ronald G. Shafer, a former reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal, simply assumes that this sport is as fascinating to contemporary readers as one-word baseball is. Shafer's a priori focus on McGunnigle - he began the book "as a birthday present to my wife," McGunnigle's great-granddaughter - prevents him from more fully exploring other topics that could perhaps better fill a volume, including the three different major leagues that indeed existed during the 1890 season (only one of which, the National League, is still with us) or the second borosugh's relationship to the franchise that, in 1932, officially became the Dodgers. Instead, we are left with "Mac," an admittedly innovative thinker who, in the tradition of the American tinkerer, helped invent the catcher's mitt and patented detachable spikes. Yet Charley Byrne, the canny and free-spending owner of the Brooklyn Base Ball Club, seems more deserving both of credit for his squad's success and for the Hall of Fame membership Shafer so desires for McGunnigle.