General

This anthology gathers selected papers from the 2007 and 2008 meetings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the long-running academic conference held annually at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Essays included employ the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780744227086Author Patrick SullivanFormat PaperbackPage Count 92Imprint Montezuma PublishingPublisher Montezuma PublishingWeight(grams) 86g

Anyone who's tuned in to a White Sox game during the past four decades has heard his calls and catchphrases: "Mercy!" "Rack 'em up!" "He gone!" Ken Harrelson is a man who knows how to talk and is brimming with stories, but even the most dedicated fans...

Since its inception in 1938, the Liga de Beisbol Professional de Puerto Rico has launched the careers of numerous island players, including Ruben Gomez, Jerry Morales, Orlando Cepeda, Vic Power, Ruben Sierra and the greatest of all Puerto Rican stars,...

After the Civil War, the Yankee textile industry began a steady transfer south, bringing with it the tradition of a mill village, usually owned by the mill's owner, where the workers and their families lived. The new game of baseball quickly became a...

In February 1925, 17-year-old Jimmie Foxx left his home in Sudlersville, Maryland, and joined the Philadelphia Athletics in spring training. Over the next twenty years, Foxx was one of the most consistent stars in the majors. His long home runs were...

From 1949 until 1990, Dorothy Jane Mills quietly contributed her research and writing to the first baseball histories ever written by a historian. The wife of historian Harold Seymour, she found herself increasingly involved with his books, as the...

The retiring of a number to honor a player likely began with the New York Yankees. The Yankees were not the first team to experiment with numbers on uniforms to identify players, but they were the first to wear numbers permanently and retired Lou...

Though they never led the league in double plays turned, and though at times they actively disliked one another, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance of the Chicago Cubs have for decades been called one of the greatest, most colorful and most...

Throughout baseball's long history, only twenty pitchers have thrown fifty or more complete game shutouts. In all probability, the author contends, this list of baseball elite has likely seen its last inductee, as the emergence of relief pitchers and...

On September 27, 1865, gambler Kane McLoughlin paid William Wansley $100 to ensure that the Brooklyn Eckfords would beat the Mutuals of New York. Wansley bribed Mutuals shortstop Tom Devyr and third baseman Ed Duffy to join the plot. The result was a...

The Indiana State University Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. This work is comprised of 18 essays from the ISU conferences of 1995 through...

The 1917 Chicago White Sox were rooted in frustration over eleventh hour pennant losses as far back as 1907 and 1908. Charles Comiskey, one of the founding fathers of the American League and a man who did not gladly suffer mediocrity and losing, had...

The 1889 baseball season is unique in the history of baseball. Both leagues--the veteran National League and the upstart American Association--featured thrilling pennant races that were not decided until the final day of the season. There was...

With a title drought that started in New York and carried on for more than five decades after the move to the west coast, the San Francisco Giants and their fans were growing restless, waiting for a team like the 2010 roster and that one magical...

Each work, chosen with exquisite care by an expert, is analyzed and summarized. Its greatness as baseball literature, its place in the genre, its peculiarities, weaknesses, strengths, how the critics went for it--all are discussed in such a way, with...

An irony of enshrinement at the baseball Hall of Fame is that it's no guarantee of lasting name recognition. The sport's history stretches too far back, as today fans scratch their heads about athletes and owners who were among the most celebrated...

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...

Mathewson, one of the towering figures in baseball history, won 373 games in 17 seasons, all but one of those victories for the New York Giants. After his playing career, he was a manager, army officer and baseball executive, played a role in the...

Baseball player and manager Hugh Ambrose Jennings was the kind of colorful personality who inspired nicknames. Sportswriters called him "Ee-yah" for his famous coaching box cry and "Hustling Hughey" for his style of play. But to the nearly 100 other men...

As World War II depleted the available manpower available to the major and minor leagues, Chicago Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley came up with a plan to ensure baseball would continue in the war years: the creation of the All-American Girls Professional...

By the mid-1870s, gambling in baseball threatened the public's confidence in the sport and its very existence as a professional enterprise. Recognizing this, Chicago owner William A. Hulbert and seven of his colleagues formed the National League,...

The Pacific Coast League had emerged from the Depression of the 1930s in fairly good condition. There were four new ball parks: Seals Stadium in San Francisco in 1931, Lane Field in San Diego in 1936, Sick's Stadium in Seattle in 1938 and Gilmore Field...

The basic elements of baseball remain essentially the same as they were when the first professional game was played in the 1870s. Changes in this sport--when they come--come slowly. In 1973, one of baseball's most drastic changes was legislated:...

Recent polls have placed football ahead of baseball in popularity. Does this reflect football's rise or baseball's decline? Why has the national pastime--a title perhaps becoming inaccurate--fallen behind other major sports? Is the trend reversible? ...

The Indianapolis ABCs were formed around the turn of the century, playing company teams from around the city; they soon played other teams in Indiana, including some white teams. Their emergence coincided with the remarkable growth of black baseball,...

In 1908 baseball was the only game that mattered in the South. With no major league team in the region, rivalries between Southern Association cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans were heated. This season, however, no city was...

True professional baseball has not been played in Cuba since banned by the communist regime after the 1961 season, but there is a legacy of more than 70 years of continuous excellence by countless Cubans who played in the organized leagues of the island...

This work starts with the formation of the first baseball club in America, the Olympic Town Ball Club, and concludes with the final year of the National League's monopoly. Also included: the early Philadelphia club teams, including the first great...

This is the story of one of the most dramatic baseball seasons ever, as it stretched both backwards and forwards--from the ghosts of seasons and players past to the reality of what followed. At the beginning of 1986, most of the baseball talk was...

In the 1920s baseball fans flocked to minor league ballparks, making stars of players who would never wear a major league uniform. This was particularly true on the West Coast, where fans embraced the colorful Pacific Coast league as a third major...

During his remarkable 17-year career (1900-1916), Christy Mathewson was the dominant pitcher in the National league. His 373 wins stand as the third highest total in baseball history. Mathewson was a gentleman, a rarity in the raucous world of...

The players of the independent Carolina League were outlaws. A diverse lot that included preachers and ex-cons, with many former and future Major Leaguers, they played ball during the desperate years of the Great Depression, when half of organized...

In the mid-1940s, the post-war United States was a prosperous country, and baseball had its own share of this prosperity. An expanding minor league led to unprecedented competition for young baseball talent. The ill-conceived idea of a signing bonus...

Baseball lore is replete with the tales of such legendary Negro League stars as Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson and a few others. But the stories of the many other African Americans, both stars and journeymen, have largely been forgotten...

From 1884 to 1953, the International League enjoyed a measure of stability that was the envy of many other minor leagues. With franchises located in cities along the East Coast and Canada--including Newark, Toronto, Baltimore, Montreal, and...

Cap Anson's plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame sums up his career with admirable simplicity: "The greatest hitter and greatest National League player-manager of the 19th century." Anson helped make baseball the national pastime. He hit over .300 in...

Many of the great ballplayers of the Negro League have been forgotten simply because baseball's Hall of Fame would not recognize black players until Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige made their way into the Hall of Fame. For this book, more than 50...

For baseball players, the dream of a championship season begins in spring training. Newcomers and veterans, journeymen and legends, all come together for a single purpose--to win the World Series. And each year, all but one team goes into the off-season...

In the late 19th century, baseball players broke from the established leagues and organized their own Players' League. They believed that this rival organization would make wages subject to market conditions and give players more mastery over their...