TORONTO - As major league baseball emerged into the 20th century, its image was anything but pristine. Gambling by players was commonplace, and the league politics was as dirty as the basepaths, and this all long before the infamous Black Sox Scandal of 1919.

Against this backdrop, Hal Chase emerged as one of the game's greatest players and one of its most scandalous characters. With charisma and bravado that earned him the nickname The Prince, Chase charmed his way across America, spinning lies in the afternoon, dealing high-stakes poker at night, and gamboling with beautiful women until dawn. Most notoriously of all, he undermined his stature as the era's greatest first baseman by conniving with gamblers to fix games and draw teammates into his diamond conspiracies.

But as Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella reveal in their groundbreaking biography, The Black Prince of Baseball (SportClassic Books, April, $23.95), Chase was also a scapegoat for baseball notables with dirtier hands than his. These included league officials who ignored facts in an attempt to pin the 1919 Black Sox scandal on him and, as never revealed before, the fabled John McGraw, who perjured himself on a witness stand against the first baseman.

Not that Chase was an innocent. He was a hard-drinking, heavy-gambling rogue who enjoyed the disreputable company that frequented the saloons and dance halls on the seedier side of America's cities. Extraordinary research by the authors implicates Chase in other shady enterprises -- not least an attempt to blackmail evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson -- but, through it all, Chase was never banned from the major leagues.

As The Black Prince of Baseball makes clear in its exhaustive study of the player Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb both include on their all-time dream teams, Hal Chase was much more than an illustration for the riches to rags story moralists have sought to make him. In his wide-ranging talents and larcenies, he personified all the excesses of Ragtime.

To arrange an interview with Donald Dewey or Nicholas Acocella, contact publicity@sportclassicbooks.com.

Donald Dewey and Nick Acocella are the combined authors of several books, including The All-Time All-Star Baseball Book and the Biographical History of Baseball. Dewey lives in Jamaica, N.Y. Acocella lives in Hoboken, N.J.

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Also by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella:

• Total Ballclubs: The Ultimate Book of Baseball Teams