The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Allen Abel’s The Short Life of Hughie McLoon.
Veteran
sportswriter, reporter, and author Allen Abel’s “The Short Life of Hughie
McLoon: A True Story of Baseball, Magic, and Murder,” recounts the life of a
deformed youngster who navigates through 19th-century professional baseball,
boxing and organized crime in Philadelphia, my hometown.
As Mr. Abel tells it, the professional athletes at the
time were a superstitious lot, and sports teams adopted human mascots, such as
a short hunchback, as good luck charms.
Hughie McLoon (1902-1928)
was deformed by a fall at the age of 3. He became one of the best-known mascots
after he told Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack in 1916 that he could
break the teams’ losing streak. The legendary baseball manager hired McLoon as
a bat boy and McLoon stayed with Mack for three years and then shifted to
boxing, where he brought good luck to several legendary boxers.
This led to
his becoming a boxing manager and a manager of a Philadelphia speakeasy
during Prohibition for Max “Boo Boo” Hoff, the Philadelphia king of
illegal booze.
I reached out to Allen Abel and asked him why he wrote
the book.
“After a dozen years on the Hill and in the White House
briefing room, writing the 100% true biography of a murdered hunchbacked bat
boy was a delicious change-of-pace,” Mr. Abel said. “Philadelphia was
politically corrupt, morally bankrupt, murderously violent, and too drunk to
care. Philly embraced Prohibition with all the passion of Donald J. Trump
kissing Rosie O’Donnell.”
I asked how
he would describe Hughie McLoon..
“He’s a wise-cracking, street-smart, umpire-baiting, fatherless boy searching for love and acceptance and finding it at the highest level of sport, celebrity, and organized crime — a broken boy who lived a leprechaun’s life and died a gangster’s death.”
You can read the rest of the column below or via the below link:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/30/book-review-the-short-life-of-hughie-mcloon/
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