Ted Sullivan, Barnacle of Baseball

In his day, perhaps no one in baseball was better known than Irish-born Timothy Paul "e;Ted"e; Sullivan. For 50 years, America's sportswriters sang his praises, genuflected to his genius and bought his blarney by the barrel. Damon Runyon dubbed him "e;The Celebrated Carpetbagger of Baseball."e; Cunning, fast-talking, witty and sober, Sullivan was the game's first player agent, a groundbreaking scout who pulled future Hall of Famers from the bushes, an author, a playwright and a baseball evangelist who promoted the game across five continents. He coined the term "e;fan"e; and was among the first to suggest the designated hitter--because pitchers were "e;a lot of whippoorwill swingers."e; But he was also a convert to the Jim Crow attitudes of his day--black ballplayers were unimaginable to him. Unearthing thousands of contemporaneous newspaper accounts, this first exhaustive biography of "e;Hustlin'"e; Ted Sullivan recounts the life and career of one of the greatest hucksters in the history of the game.