Baseball

In the mid-1940s, the post-war United States was a prosperous country, and baseball had its own share of this prosperity.

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 from 1878 to 1961.

On September 10, 1934, grizzled reliever Burleigh Grimes helped the Pittsburgh Pirates to an inconsequential 9-7 win over the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds.

The 1889 baseball season is unique in the history of baseball.

This collection of well-crafted essays spans more than 40 years of franchise history but hews to a single theme: the experience--sometimes humorous, sometimes painful--of being a fan of the New York Mets.

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 Baseball League.

This work focuses on the baseball movie genre in the years following World War II, beginning with the 1948 biopic The Babe Ruth Story and ending with the 1962 Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris vehicle Safe at Home!

On August 16, 1920, Yankees pitcher Carl Mays threw a fastball that struck Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in the head.

This is a graphic biography of Fred Hutchinson, one of baseball's most beloved men.

Thirty years into baseball's sabermetric revolution, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of a major league umpire's ball-and-strike judgment on game results.

Known today as "e;the Babe Ruth of the 1880s,"e; Hall of Famer Roger Connor was the greatest of the nineteenth-century home run hitters, his career total (138) having stood as the major league record for nearly 24 years--until it was broken by Ruth himself.

While the story of the Negro Leagues has been well documented, few baseball fans know about the Japanese American Nisei Leagues, or of their most influential figure, Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968).

Every spring, thousands of ball players across the country step back to the nineteenth century to play vintage base ball using the equipment, uniforms, rules, and customs of the game's early years.

It is not known exactly when base ball first made its way down to the Carolinas, but it was being played in North and South Carolina at least as early as the Civil War.

In early 1869, Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club made an announcement to the sporting press: the Red Stockings would be the first all-professional club in the history of the game.

An irony of enshrinement at the baseball Hall of Fame is that it's no guarantee of lasting name recognition.

An irony of enshrinement at the baseball Hall of Fame is that it's no guarantee of lasting name recognition.

Like virtually every other aspect of American life, baseball was affected by World War II.

The way to becoming a professional ballplayer is not an easy one.

The New York Yankees' history is filled with great achievements, outstanding performances, and unprecedented success.

Of baseball there have been countless books, but, surprisingly, relatively few about the owners, the men and women who invested their time--and, frequently, their fortunes--in baseball teams.

This collection of nine essays examines some of baseball's most elusive mysteries.

From the genesis of baseball in the 1840s, when so-called "e;kranks"e; cheered the teams of their choice, fans have been an ever-present component of the sport.

At least as far back as 1842 through about the late 1930s and mid-1940s, before baseball became commercialized and teams were able to hire one man to manage the entire team, it was not uncommon for one person to fill the roles of player and manager simultaneously.

Melvin Thomas Ott was smaller than most home run sluggers, at 5'9"e;, 170 pounds, but he could sure hit 'em as far as the big boys.

In baseball, as in much poetry, beauty comes from tension.

The San Francisco Seals were members of baseball's Pacific Coast League from 1903 until 1958.

Led by the colorful pitcher Dizzy Dean, the 1934 St.

Beginning with the premise that there is no other rivalry in team sports like that between the Cubs and the White Sox this work traces the history of the antagonism (and, at times, open hostility) between the fans of the two clubs.

Beginning in 1845, the New York Knickerbockers were the first fully organized base ball club to play the game with written rules similar to those used today.

Examining baseball not just as a game but as a social, historical, and political force, this collection of sixteen essays looks at the sport from the perspectives of race, sexual orientation, economic power, social class, imperialism, nationalism, and international diplomacy.

This work is a biography of Carl Hubbell, a baseball legend who was active in the 1930s for the New York Giants and an eight-time All-Star.

This work traces New Mexican baseball from its beginnings in the West of Billy the Kid and Geronimo to today's modern game.

This biography of Edd Roush, Indiana-born deadball batting king, centers on the events of the 1919 Black Sox World series but covers his life in full.

For more than five decades, pioneering researcher Dorothy Seymour Mills has studied and written about baseball's past.

This is the story of the 1959 Dodgers, a team that rose above its disastrous first season on the West Coast for an out-of-nowhere World Series title.

For any baseball fanatic, a trip to Cooperstown can take on the aura of a holy pilgrimage.

This book traces the history of the New York Mets from the franchise's inauspicious beginnings--the 1962 team, led by Casey Stengel and made up of players like Rod Kanehl and Jay Hook, lost 120 games--through the miraculous championship season of 1969.

Heading into their ninth season, the expansion Washington Senators had never won more than 76 games in a season.

Many fans enjoy keeping track of baseball action with easy abbreviations written on simple grids.

Despite the pressures of racism and a troubled personal life, Jimmy "e;The Toy Cannon"e; Wynn achieved remarkable success as a major league player.

Though the players make the highlight reels, for fans of Major League Baseball the actual ballparks are often the seat of affection and team loyalty.

In 1947, after 18 major league seasons with the Browns, Senators, and Red Sox, Rick Ferrell retired as the longest playing catcher in the American League.

The typical baseball fan yearns for one of two things: a strikeout or a home run.

This history of American sports fiction traces depictions of baseball, basketball and football in works for all age levels from early dime novels through the 1960s.

While most fans know that baseball stars Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, and Bob Feller served in the military during World War II, few can name the two major leaguers who died in action.

Baseball scouts are often unseen, seldom recognized, and usually underappreciated by fans, but they have contributed enormously to the development and evolution of baseball at all levels, from the players they signed to the changes in the business climate of the game.

In 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox famously conspired to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

The 1909 World Series featured Hall of Fame players Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner and was the first championship to extend to Game Seven, the final and deciding game.

This is a history of major league baseball's first All-Star game, originally conceived in 1933 as a one-time "e;Game of the Century"e; (including greats such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubbell and Lefty Grove) to lift the spirits of the nation and its people in the midst of the Great Depression.