Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe

Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe is a biography of Double Duty Radcliffe by Kyle McNary. The book is very clearly self-published, given a couple editorial errors. More problematic is the hero worship evident on the part of the author. Interspersed with the hero worship is Radcliffe's own boasting and Radcliffe and former teammates whining about how the game of baseball just isn't what it used to be and how everyone was so much better in their heyday. McNary also clearly lacks perspective on baseball talent levels - he repeatedly ranks semipro leagues and teams as just below major league quality. He claims Vernon "Moose" Johnson (a good Western League slugger, comparable to lots of other Western players of the 1920s and 1930s) was better than Bob Meusel or that Axel Leary (a .300 hitter in the low minors) was equal to Mark Koenig. This lack of perspective also leads to his counting Radcliffe's stats against amateur and semipro teams as equal to his work against real Negro League clubs. The book offers as good a view as we can presently get into the life and views of Radcliffe, but readers need to keep the above facts in mind.