Base Ball Founders

Base Ball Founders PDF

Author: Peter Morris

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2013-07-15

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0786474300

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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.

Baseball in the Garden of Eden

Baseball in the Garden of Eden PDF

Author: John Thorn

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0743294041

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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.

Baseball's First Inning

Baseball's First Inning PDF

Author: William J. Ryczek

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-11-29

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0786482834

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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.

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 8

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 8 PDF

Author: John Thorn

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-01-09

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 1476617481

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BACK ISSUE Base Ball is a peer-reviewed book series published annually. Offering the best in original research and analysis, it promotes study of baseball's early history, from its protoball roots to 1920, and its rise to prominence within American popular culture. Prior to Volume 10, Base Ball was published as Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. This is a back issue of that journal.

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 9

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 9 PDF

Author: John Thorn

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2016-06-22

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786479054

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BACK ISSUE Base Ball is a peer-reviewed book series published annually. Offering the best in original research and analysis, it promotes study of baseball's early history, from its protoball roots to 1920, and its rise to prominence within American popular culture. Prior to Volume 10, Base Ball was published as Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. This is a back issue of that journal.

How Baseball Happened

How Baseball Happened PDF

Author: Thomas W. Gilbert

Publisher: Godine+ORM

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1567926886

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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

The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870

The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 PDF

Author: Marshall D. Wright

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2000-04-15

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13:

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Before the onset of professional baseball, there existed a myriad of teams and players going back to the 1840s. The early years centered around an organization known as the National Association of Base Ball Players. This group, the antecedents of which date to 1857, governed the world of baseball until the formation of the first all-professional league in 1871. This book is the definitive statistical reference to that organization, from its humble beginnings through its explosive growth after the Civil War, culminating with its coast-to-coast inclusion of several hundred amateur and professional clubs. Relying for the most part on primary sources, the author has included introductory essays for each year, complete team statistics, every game score, and individual batting and pitching statistics for all players.

Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870

Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 PDF

Author: Peter Morris

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0786490012

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By 1871, the popularity of baseball had spread so thoroughly across America that one writer observed, "It is as much our national game as cricket is that of the English." While major league teams and athletes that played after this prophetic statement was made have been exhaustively documented and analyzed, those that led the game during its pioneer phase from 1850 to 1870 have received relatively little attention. In this welcome work, leading historians of early baseball provide profiles of more than fifty clubs and their players, from legendary teams such as the Red Stockings of Cincinnati and the Nationals of Washington to forgotten nines like the Pecatonica (Illinois) Base Ball Club and the Morning Star Club of St. Louis. Engaging narratives bring these long-ago clubs back to life, stimulating more research on this fascinating era and creating a standard reference source for all who study America's national pastime.

Alexander Cartwright

Alexander Cartwright PDF

Author: Monica Nucciarone

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0803233531

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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, and especially with his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938, Cartwright has been celebrated as the founder of our national pastime, much like Abner Doubleday. As with Doubleday, Cartwright?s claim to fame has caused 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. ø Through journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings, 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?and as worthy of the history books?as any legend he inspired.

Pete Rose

Pete Rose PDF

Author: William A. Cook

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2003-11-25

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0786417331

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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.