This is book 3 in the series on 1880s baseball from Society of American Baseball Research member Dr. Rob Bauer. He is a member of SABR's 19th Century and Deadball Era research committees.After the 1889 baseball season, the players of the National League, furious over their treatment by NL owners, decided to secede from the National League and start their own rival league, the Players League. Their league lasted only one season, but its formation remains one of the seminal events in...

This is book 1 in the series on 1880s baseball from Society of American Baseball Research member Dr. Rob Bauer. He is a member of SABR's 19th Century and Deadball Era research committees.This is a book not just for baseball fans. It’s a comprehensive examination of the unusual ways players behaved in 1880s baseball, full of fun stories anyone can enjoy.In the 1880s, drinking by baseball players was out of control. Every team had players who drank too much. Men came to the b...

This is book 2 in the series on 1880s baseball from Society of American Baseball Research member Dr. Rob Bauer. He is a member of SABR's 19th Century and Deadball Era research committees.Although on the decline, the threat of gambling on games continued menacing baseball in the 1880s. One issue that certainly was not in decline, however, was the abuse of umpires. Arguments and rows between players, fans, and umpires ranks among the most important issues in the game in this decade. ...

“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey’s book proves it, without wasting a word.”—Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of America’s Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles a...

If baseball is America's national religion, then the Hall of Fame is its High Church. Being named among its 286 inductees makes you the closest thing our country has to an undisputed hero - even a secular saint. But the men in the Hall of Fame are no angels. Among their number are gamblers, drunks, race-baiters, at least one murderer, and perhaps the greatest collection of bona fide characters ever to be dignified by an honor of any kind.This is the book the Hall of Fame deserves. ...

The book that inspired Harrison Ford in his portrayal of Branch Rickey in the hit movie “42”The idea of integrating baseball began as a dream in the mind of Branch Rickey. In 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he defied racism on and off the field to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, changing the sport and the nation forever. Rickey's is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose deep-seated faith and dogged wor...

In the mid-1970s, the city of Boston entered a period of upheaval on both its historic cobblestone streets and its legendary parquet basketball court. The Boston Celtics' long dominance of the NBA came to an abrupt end, and the city's image as a hub of social justice was shaken to its core. When the federal courts declared, in 1974, that the city was in violation of school desegregation rulings and would need to institute a busing program, Boston became deeply polarized. Then, just as the ...

Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again.Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. Instead, meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth, each of whom has a stronger claim to baseball paternity than Doubleday or Cartwright.But did baseball even have a father—or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball’s preeminent historian, examines th...

Chris von der Ahe knew next to nothing about baseball when he risked his life's savings to found the franchise that would become the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor would become one of the most important -- and funniest -- figures in the game's history.Von der Ahe picked up the team for one reason -- to sell more beer. Then he helped gather a group of ragtag professional clubs together to create a maverick new league that would fight the haughty Nati...

A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBAAgainst a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro-basketb...

**Now with bonus material on the Chicago Cubs' World Series win, the New York Times-bestselling history of America's most beloved baseball stadium, Wrigley Field, and the Cubs’ century-long search for World Series gloryIn A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Wi...

Originally published in 1976, James A. Michener’s explosive, spectacular Sports in America is a prescient examination of the crisis in American sports that is still unfolding to this day. Pro basketball players are banned for narcotics use, while a Major League pitcher is arrested for smuggling drugs across the Mexican border. The NFL’s “injury report” grows longer every Sunday. Corruption and recruiting violations plague collegiate sports as the “winning is everything” mentality ...