With virtually the same personnel that had won both the National League pennant and the World Series the previous season, the 1926 Pittsburgh Pirates were favored by the majority of preseason prognosticators to capture the pennant for the second year in a row. But they finished in third place, four and a half games behind the St. Louis Cardinals.
That failure has largely been attributed to the alleged dissension caused by the presence of vice president and assistant to the manager Fred Clarke on the Pirate bench and to the ramifications of an attempt by several players to remove him, known as the “ABC Affair.” This book chronicles the ’26 Pirates, showing that the blame assigned to Clarke has been mostly misplaced and that the reasons for the Bucs’ failure were far more complex.

Angelo J. Louisa is a researcher, writer, and community educator who lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Angelo J. Louisa
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 332
Bibliographic Info: 35 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7070-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2254-5
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Foreword by David C. Ogden 1

Acknowledgments 3

Introduction: Setting the Record Straight 9

One. Colorful, Competitive and Consistently Falling Short 13

Two. The Return of Fred Clarke 46

Three. High Expectations, Disappointing Results 87

Four. The ABC Affair 123

Five. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted 163

Six. Making Sense of It All 207

Key to the Abbreviations Used in the Appendices 233

Appendix A: Biographical Information for the 1926 Pirates 234

Appendix B: Offensive Statistics 249

Appendix C: Pitching Statistics 254

Appendix D: Fielding Statistics 257

Chapter Notes 261

Bibliography 301

Index 313