2021 Seymour Medal FinalistNamed a Best Baseball Book of 2020 by Sports Collectors DigestNew York Times 2020 Summer Reading ListFrom the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939–2019) was the sports world’s deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by managem...

Winner of the 2025 Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research AwardUnder Jackie’s Shadow is a portal to the hidden world of Minor League baseball in the era just after Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.What was it like to be Black and playing in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1965, or Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973? What was it like to play for white coaches and scouting directors from the Jim Crow South who cut their professional te...

When the Philadelphia Phillies signed Dick Allen in 1960, fans of the franchise envisioned bearing witness to feats never before accomplished by a Phillies player. A half-century later, they're still trying to make sense of what they saw.Carrying to the plate baseball's heaviest and loudest bat as well as the burden of being the club's first African American superstar, Allen found both hits and controversy with ease and regularity as he established himself as the premier individual...

On Friday, October 7, 1977, the Philadelphia Phillies experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows in their then 94-year history--all within the span of a single grey afternoon. An afternoon that turned so dark so fast that Phils fans would refer to it forever after as Black Friday.Following a 1976 season in which the perennial laughingstock of a franchise won 101 games, the '77 Phillies had been even better. With a lineup that featured Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski in th...

When the Philadelphia Phillies signed Dick Allen in 1960, fans of the franchise envisioned bearing witness to feats never before accomplished by a Phillies player. A half-century later, they're still trying to make sense of what they saw.Carrying to the plate baseball's heaviest and loudest bat as well as the burden of being the club's first African American superstar, Allen found both hits and controversy with ease and regularity as he established himself as the premier individual...

The stories of thirteen Black Minor League baseball players during the post–Jackie Robinson era, from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, who were figuratively and literally left behind even as both baseball and the country claimed a newfound racial progressiveness.

From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939–2019) was the sports world's deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative spor...

The study of baseball history and culture shows the national pastime to be a forum of debate where issues of sport, labor, race, character and the ethics of work and play are decided. An understanding of baseball calls for consideration of different perspectives.This very readable textbook offers insights into baseball history as a subject worthy of scholarly attention. Each chapter introduces a specific disciplinary approach--history, economics, media, law and fiction--and poses r...