?Ban Johnson is one of the most important figures in baseball history. Virtually single-handedly he created the American League. ... His career ended sadly, anticlimactically, and, from Johnson's perspective, tragically. But no other individual dd so much to shape the baseball world or today. Murdock's biography of Johnson is an example of the new seriousness of baseball history. It is scholarly, annotated, cautious, probing, and persuasive. If baseball historians emulate Murdock in his professionalism, they will have no difficulty having their enterprise taken fully seriously.?-Choice