Jerrold Casway’s fascinating biography of legendary baseball player Ed Delahanty (1867–1903) offers a compelling examination of the first “King of Swatsville’s” life and career, including the enigma surrounding his tragic and untimely death. Through Delahanty’s story, Casway traces the evolving character of major league baseball and its effect on the lives and ambitions of its athletes.

Delahanty’s career spanned the last decades of the nineteenth century during a time when the sons of post-famine Irish refugees dominated the sport and changed the playing style of...