Irving M. Stein’s The Ginger Kid: The Buck Weaver Story is an earnest biography of one of the more intriguing figures in the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal. By virtually all accounts, the White Sox star third baseman knew of his seven teammates’ World Series conspiracy, but did not agree to the scheme nor did he accept any payoff. His crime, for which he was permanently banned from baseball along with those seven players, was not blowing the whistle on them. The author provides some good personal background on Weaver, particularly his upbringing and his later years after baseball; and dutifully recaps his career and the events of the scandal, referencing Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out along the way, but he makes the unfortunate error of failing to realize that that book on the 1919 Black Sox is a work of fiction: historical fiction of course, but fiction nonetheless with presumed dialogue to fill some of the narrative gaps. Sadly, Stein cites some of those fictitious quotes and fictional events as fact to build a case for Weaver’s exoneration. Stein nevertheless still makes a compelling case for Weaver’s posthumous reinstatement, and the chronicle of Buck’s repeated attempts to clear his name and make his way back into baseball long after Commissioner Landis’s 1920 ruling adds the final layer of pathos to the sad story of the Ginger Kid. ( )

Being a life of the most-controversially bannes of the Black Sox. It's amazing that nobody has adopted Weaver as a subject before and this a welcome and well-done project. ( )