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This book completes the series of histories of the clubs and players responsible for making baseball the national pastime that began with Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 (McFarland 2011). Forty clubs and hundreds of pioneer players from the first hotbeds of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are profiled by leading experts on baseball's early years. The subjects include legendary clubs such as the Knickerbockers of New York, the Eckfords and Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Athletics of Philadelphia, and Harvard's first baseball clubs, and fabled players like Jim Creighton, Dickey Pearce, and Daniel Adams, but space is also given to less well remembered clubs such as the Champion Club of Jersey City and the Cummaquids of Barnstable, Massachusetts. What united all of these founders of the game was that their love of baseball during its earliest years helped to make it the national pastime.
Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Did baseball even have a father--or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling, a proxy form of class warfare. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. Full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes, this book tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed--all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.--From publisher description.
This history of America's pastime describes the evolution of baseball from early bat and ball games to its growth and acceptance in different regions of the country. Such New York clubs as the Atlantics, Excelsiors and Mutuals are a primary focus, serving as examples of how the sport became more sophisticated and popular. The author compares theories about many of baseball's "inventors," exploring the often fascinating stories of several of baseball's oldest founding myths. The impact of the Civil War on the sport is discussed and baseball's unsteady path to becoming America's national game is analyzed at length.
The untold story of baseball’s nineteenth-century origins: “a delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat” (Paul Dickson, The Wall Street Journal). You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. Perhaps you’ve read that baseball’s color line was first crossed by Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. Baseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. They were hundreds of uncredited, ordinary people who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. In this myth-busting history, Thomas W. Gilbert reveals the true beginnings of baseball. Through newspaper accounts, diaries, and other accounts, he explains how it evolved through the mid-nineteenth century into a modern sport of championships, media coverage, and famous stars—all before the first professional league was formed in 1871. Winner of the Casey Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year
Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. (1820–92) was present during the organization of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York in the mid-1800s. That much is certain. Since that time, Cartwright has been celebrated as the founder of our national pastime, much like Abner Doubleday. As with Doubleday, however, Cartwright’s claim to fame has also spawned all sorts of conjecture and controversy. His complex life, not just the mythography surrounding him, comes clearly into focus in Monica Nucciarone’s biography of the incomparable Cartwright. Nucciarone traces Cartwright’s path from Elysian Fields in New Jersey to a gold-rush adventure in California, and on to Honolulu, where he became involved in the movement to annex Hawaii to the United States. Beginning with the widely held notion that Cartwright created the game of baseball as we know it today, then spread it across North America to Hawaii like a Johnny Appleseed, Nucciarone’s book separates fact from speculation. Although the picture that emerges may not be the Alexander Cartwright of legend, it shows us a man as colorful, complicated, and immense in character as any legend he inspired.
A brand new edition of the finalist for the 2008 Casey Award, presented annually to the best baseball book, 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out profiles America’s greatest baseball museums, shrines, sports bars, pop culture landmarks and ballpark sites. From sandlots and skyboxes to TV rooms and sports bars, America’s love for baseball has inspired countless memories, discussions, and tributes. Josh Pahigian takes us across America to explore the places where the game’s history, culture, and lore come to life. Whether we travel by car or sit in the comfort of our favorite armchair, the book guides us to 101 amazing baseball places—including Ted Williams’ boyhood home, the Field of Dreams movie site, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Chicago bar where the Cubs’ “Curse of the Billy Goat” was born, Babe Ruth’s grave, and scores of other captivating landmarks and curios. Replacing the now-extinct sites from the previous edition, updating entries for attractions that have moved, re-assigning coveted chapters to more inspiring baseball venues that have since opened, and including stunning color photos for nearly all of them, Josh Pahigian has created the perfect gift for any baseball fan.
Baseball has been called America's true melting pot, a game that unites us as a people. Issei Baseball is the story of the pioneers of Japanese American baseball, Harry Saisho, Ken Kitsuse, Tom Uyeda, Tozan Masko, Kiichi Suzuki, and others--young men who came to the United States to start a new life but found bigotry and discrimination. In 1905 they formed a baseball club in Los Angeles and began playing local amateur teams. Inspired by the Waseda University baseball team's 1905 visit to the West Coast, they became the first Japanese professional baseball club on either side of the Pacific and barnstormed across the American Midwest in 1906 and 1911. Tens of thousands came to see "how the minions of the Mikado played the national pastime." As they played, the Japanese earned the respect of their opponents and fans, breaking down racial stereotypes. Baseball became a bridge between the two cultures, bringing Japanese and Americans together through the shared love of the game. Issei Baseball focuses on the small group of men who formed the first professional and semiprofessional Japanese baseball clubs. These players' story tells the history of early Japanese American baseball, including the placement of Saisho, Kitsuse, and their families in relocation camps during World War II and the Japanese immigrant experience.
On September 11, 1985, with a sell-out crowd of 52,000 fans on hand at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium and millions of others watching on television, Pete Rose collected hit number 4,192 of his career and passed Ty Cobb as the all-time career hits leader. As he reached first base, thousands of cameras flashed, his teammates mobbed him, fireworks exploded and the crowd overwhelmed him with a seven-minute standing ovation. Rose was on top of the world. Less than four years later, he would be banned for life from baseball for allegedly betting on major league games, roundly criticized in the press by both fans and fellow players, and then convicted for tax evasion. In 2003, fourteen years after he was made ineligible for the Hall of Fame, Commissioner Bud Selig took up Rose's application for reinstatement, igniting once again an intense debate about his legacy and baseball's long-standing zero-tolerance policy on gambling. This book gathers the available facts of Rose's life and career, as well as the scandals he was embroiled in, leaving the reader a more informed participant in the ongoing discussion.
SABR 50 at 50 celebrates and highlights the Society for American Baseball Research’s wide-ranging contributions to baseball history. Established in 1971 in Cooperstown, New York, SABR has sought to foster and disseminate the research of baseball—with groundbreaking work from statisticians, historians, and independent researchers—and has published dozens of articles with far-reaching and long-lasting impact on the game. Among its current membership are many Major and Minor League Baseball officials, broadcasters, and writers as well as numerous former players. The diversity of SABR members’ interests is reflected in this fiftieth-anniversary volume—from baseball and the arts to statistical analysis to the Deadball Era to women in baseball. SABR 50 at 50 includes the most important and influential research published by members across a multitude of topics, including the sabermetric work of Dick Cramer, Pete Palmer, and Bill James, along with Jerry Malloy on the Negro Leagues, Keith Olbermann on why the shortstop position is number 6, John Thorn and Jules Tygiel on the untold story behind Jackie Robinson’s signing with the Dodgers, and Gai Berlage on the Colorado Silver Bullets women’s team in the 1990s. To provide history and context, each notable research article is accompanied by a short introduction. As SABR celebrates fifty years this collection gathers the organization’s most notable research and baseball history for the serious baseball reader.
Fenway Park. The name evokes a team and a sport that have become more synonymous with a city's identity than any stadium or arena in the country. Since opening in the same week of 1912 that the Titanic sank, the park's instantly recognizable confines have seen some of the most dramatic happenings in baseball history, including Carlton Fisk's "Is it fair?" home run in the 1975 World Series and Ted Williams's perfectly scripted long ball in his final at-bat. For 100 years, the Fenway faithful have been tested. They have known triumph and heartbreak, miracles and curses -- well, one curse in particular -- to such a degree that an entire nation of fans heaved a collective sigh of relief when Dave Roberts stole a base by a fingertip in 2004, triggering the most amazing comeback in the game's annals. To sit and watch a game at Fenway is to recognize that the pitcher is standing on the same mound where Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Babe Ruth pitched, that a hitter is in the same batter's box where Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron and Shoeless Joe Jackson dug in to take their swings. This is a ballpark that has embraced its odd construction quirks, including the bizarre triangle out in center field and the Green Monster that looms above the left fielder, and today -- for better and for worse -- it remains largely unchanged from the day it opened. In its long history, Fenway has hosted football, hockey, soccer, boxing, and so much more. It has provided a backdrop to hundreds of historic events having nothing to do with sports, including concerts, religious gatherings, and political rallies. It was the site of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's final campaign address, as well as visits by music luminaries from Stevie Wonder to Bruce Springsteen to the Rolling Stones. Through it all, the Boston Globe has been the consistent, respected chronicler of every important moment in park history. In fact, the newspaper played a remarkable role in Fenway's creation and evolution: the Taylor family -- founders and longtime owners of the Globe -- owned the ballclub in 1912, helped finance the new stadium, and renamed the team the "Red Sox". It is the Globe's insider perspective, combined with more than a century of exemplary journalism, that makes this book the definitive narrative history of both park and team, and a centennial collectors' item unlike any other. Its pages offer a level of detail that is unmatched, with exceptional writing and hundreds of rarely seen photographs and illustrations. This is Fenway Park, the complete story, unfiltered and expertly told.