Important Note
Note: This page is updated (as of March 24, 2013), on my Chicago Cubs website. See http://WrigleyIvy.com. My Chicago Cubs research had grown so much that I decided it needed its own website. I hope you like it.
Book out on the shooting of Billy Jurges!! My latest book, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina (an imprint of Arcadia Publishing) is The Chicago Cub Shot for Love: A Showgirl’s Crime of Passion and the 1932 World Series. Here is a summary of the book:
In the summer of 1932, Chicago Cubs shortstop Billy Jurges enjoyed spending his free time with Violet Popovich, an attractive dark-haired former showgirl. When he broke off the relationship, she got more than just angry. She confronted her former lover in his hotel room and pulled a revolver out of her purse. In the ensuing struggle for it, both are wounded, though not seriously.
The Cubs manage to win the National League pennant despite this and other incidents that threatened to derail their entire season. It’s a Chicago-New York World Series, but the New Yorkers’ anger at what they consider the shabby treatment of Jurges’s replacement—a former Yankee—fuels a fiery Fall Classic that culminates in Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot” home run.
Using newspaper articles, interviews, archival documents, and never-before-published photographs, Jack Bales traces the shooting and its aftermath, as well as profiles the lives of both Jurges and Popovich. Babe Ruth may or may not have signaled his home run through his “called shot,” but with her own shots earlier that summer, a young Chicago woman unwittingly set in motion events that indirectly changed baseball history. –Jack Bales (James E. Bales), jbales@umw.edu
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Since about 2009 I’ve been doing some reading, research, and writing on the Chicago Cubs. Mouseover the above tab to read about it all (various sub-categories are under the “Every Three Years” section). Click on photographs to enlarge them.
In the fall of 2011, I filled the UMW Library’s display cases with some of my research material. (Right): That’s the Cubs’ 1929 “Murderers’ Row” on the top shelf, left, followed by a wire photo of managers Connie Mack (Philadelphia Athletics) and Joe McCarthy (Cubs) shaking hands before the 1929 World Series. Below that is a replica of the 1909 Cubs road uniform.
(Left): This issue of Newsweek (top shelf, right) features a cover story on the 1938 World Series. To its right is a photo of Gabby Hartnett right after he hit his famous homer in the gloamin‘ on September 28, 1938. In the display cases I also explored other significant events and ballplayers’ careers. The December 2011 issue of Vine Line, the Chicago Cubs magazine, included photographs of my exhibit.
Important Note
Note: This page is out of date. I’m working on more Chicago Cubs research and updating my page. See http://WrigleyIvy.com/.