Pure Baseball
DriverWorks Ink / 27 August 2015

Pure Baseball: The Carl Jaxsom Legend by Ryan Thaddeus Published by DriverWorks Ink Review by Keith Foster $9.95 ISBN 978-0-9940720-0-9 First came baseball. Then came pure baseball. That’s where the top slugger squares off against the very best pitcher. This ultimate challenge is where Ryan Thaddeus’s Pure Baseball: The Carl Jaxsom Legend takes readers. The story is related by a grandfather telling a bedtime story to his grandson huddled under the covers next to an old, worn teddy bear named Roosevelt. Gramps tells the incredible tale of a ball player named Carl Jaxsom who retired with a batting record of one thousand – one thousand hits at one thousand times up to bat. This is the stuff legends are made of, and this fictitious account reads more like a fantastical fantasy. Gramps speaks of his experience as a ten-year-old in Boston, teaming up with his pal Sal to hawk newspapers. “Locals called us the Pepper Salt twins and for good reason,” he says. “Partly because Sal was black as a burnt match to my Irish turnip-white skin, but mostly for the stinging way we seemed to rub folks.” They witness Jaxsom’s remarkable feat in 1904, the second year of the…