To err is human. To really screw up requires team effort. Everyone cheers the clubs that win pennants, but what about the doormats who made their triumphs possible? It's time to give baseball's lousiest teams their due. Here they are: The 1904 Washington Senators, whose only good player, a thirty-five-year-old star hitter, took a dive (fatally, into Niagara Falls); the 1935 Boston Braves, who set the National League standard for losing percentage despite featuring three Hall of Famers—including Yankee exile Babe Ruth; the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates, Joe Garagiola's cellar-dwelling team that was so bad, he quipped, "they wouldn't put our pictures on bubble gum cards"; and the 1962 New York Mets, maybe not the worst team ever but definitely the funniest in modern baseball history. You'll get the stats, the scores, the scandals, and the secrets in this no-holds-barred account. When the survivors of these diamond trainwrecks include such legends as Marv Throneberry, Ralph Kiner, Cal Ripken Jr., Roger Craig, and Joe Garagiola, you can be sure that the book (unlike its subjects) is a winner.

"A snappy, readable collection."—Martin Brady, Booklist "A valuable contribution to a heretofore overlooked aspect of the so-called Grand National Pastime."—Stan Isaacs, Newsday "For some people losing is like dying, but authors George Robinson and Charles Salzberg manage to find humor too."—Washington Post "A refreshing approach by examining 10 truly bad teams."—Bob Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle "A lively and entertaining account of the worst major league teams of each decade. You may feel guilty laughing at the agonies of these hapless clubs, but . . . you will laugh."—William Curran, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Let us sing of heroic losers. . . . Humbling, that's what it is. George Robinson and Charles Salzberg make it fun, too."—Bill Bell, New York Daily News

George Robinson's sportswriting has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Newsday, and the Washington Post. Charles Salzberg is the author of numerous articles and books, including Swann's Last Song, The Mad Fisherman, and From Set Shot to Slam Dunk: The Glory Days of Basketball in the Words of Those Who Played It, available in a Bison Books edition.