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A fascinating and charming encyclopedic collection of baseball firsts, describing how the innovations in the game—in rules, equipment, styles of play, strategies, etc.—occurred and developed from its origins to the present day. The book relies heavily on quotations from contemporary sources.
Among the great pitchers in baseball history, Charles "Deacon" Phillippe and Samuel "The Schoolmaster" Leever are hardly household names. But during the first decade of the twentieth century, these two Pittsburgh Pirates were among the most celebrated pitchers in the majors. From 1900 through 1906, they posted a combined record of 261 victories against 131 losses for a win-loss percentage of .666. During the years Deacon and the Schoolmaster pitched together, the Pirates never finished out of the first division, won four National League pennants, and came in second four times. Without flamboyance or controversy to color their legacy, their fame faded quickly after their playing days. But they remain among the most important players in the history of the club.
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. For Grimes, the September contest marked his 270th and final win. For baseball, it marked the last time a legal spitballer would win a major league contest. Though the pitch had been banned in 1920, the American and National leagues both agreed to grant two exemptions per team to spitballers who were already in the majors. In 1921, both leagues agreed to extend grandfather provisions to cover the veteran spitball pitchers for the remainder of their careers. Under the extended rule, 17 pitchers were granted exemptions for their careers. This work looks at the lives and careers of these 17: Red Faber, Burleigh Grimes, Jack Quinn, Urban Shocker, Stan Coveleskie, Bill Doak, Ray Caldwell, Clarence Mitchell, Dutch Leonard, Ray Fisher, Dick Rudolph, Allen Sothoron, Phil Douglas, Allan Russell, Doc Ayers, Dana Fillingim and Marvin Goodwin.
Comeback Pitchers is the story of two pitchers, Jack Quinn and Howard Ehmke, whose intertwining careers began in the Deadball Era and continued into the 1920s and 1930s.
The story of baseball in America begins not with the fabled Abner Doubleday but with a generation of mid-nineteenth-century Americans who moved from the countryside to the cities and brought a cherished but delightfully informal game with them. But Didn't We Have Fun? will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about baseball's origins. Peter Morris, author of the prizewinning A Game of Inches, takes a fresh look at the early amateur years of the game. Mr. Morris retrieves a lost eraand a lost way of life. Offering a challenging new perspective on baseball's earliest years, and conveying the sense of delight that once pervaded the game and its players, Mr. Morris supplants old myths with a story just as marvelous-but one that reallyhappened. With 25 rare photographs and drawings.
This is the biography of Bud Fowler (ne John Jackson), the first African American to play in organized baseball, and the longest tenured at the time that the color line was drawn. In addition to his professional playing career, which lasted more than 25 years, Fowler was a scout, organizer, owner, and promoter of touring black baseball clubs--including the legendary Page Fence Giants--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural contexts for Fowler's accomplishments on and off the baseball diamond, and his prominence within the history and development of the national pastime, the text builds a convincing case for Fowler as one of the great pioneering figures of the early game.
The last independent major league ended its brief run in 1915, after only two seasons at the national pastime’s top level. But no competitor to establishment baseball ever exerted so much influence on its rival, with some of the most recognizable elements of the game today—including the commissioner system, competition for free agents, baseball’s antitrust exemption, and even the beloved Wrigley Field—traceable to the so-called outlaw organization known as the Federal League of Base Ball Clubs. This comprehensive history covers the league from its formation in 1913 through its buyout, dissolution, and legal battles with the National and American leagues. The day-to-day operation of the franchises, the pennant races and outstanding players, the two-year competitive battle for fans and players, and the short- and long-term impact on the game are covered in detail.
Richmond in the late 19th century was not the genteel peaceful community historians have made it. Virginia's capital was cosmopolitan, boisterous and crime-ridden. From 1905 to 1915 there was an official red light district. The police had their hands full with drunks and riffraff, and a variety of street urchins and waifs--most of whom were very poor--found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The juvenile delinquents of Richmond--some barely out of infancy--were held accountable in the Police Court. A juvenile court system was not established until 1916. Presiding over the Police Court for 32 years was Justice John Jeter Crutchfield who, though unlearned in the law, functioned like a biblical Solomon but with great showmanship. The Police Court attracted many tourists and some of Virginia's literary figures cut their teeth writing newspaper coverage of the proceedings, vying with each other for the most hilarious slant. What emerges from the public record is an amusing and touching picture of what life was really like in the post-Reconstruction urban South.
The story of Jackie Robinson valiantly breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 is one that most Americans know. But less recognized is the fact that some seventy years earlier, following the Civil War, baseball was tenuously biracial and had the potential for a truly open game. How, then, did the game become so firmly segregated that it required a trailblazer like Robinson? The answer, Ryan A. Swanson suggests, has everything to do with the politics of “reconciliation” and a wish to avoid the issues of race that an integrated game necessarily raised. The history of baseball during Reconstruction, as Swanson tells it, is a story of lost opportunities. Thomas Fitzgerald and Octavius Ca...
Burleigh Grimes--forever to be remembered as the ill-tempered spitballer with the perpetual five o'clock shadow. For nearly two decades, he brought his surly disposition to the pitcher's mound. His life-or-death mentality resulted in a reputation as one of the game's great competitors and a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Along the way he suited up for eight different ball clubs and played alongside a record 36 Hall of Famers. Grimes spent more than half a century in professional baseball as a player, manager, coach and scout. This biography covers all aspects of his life, from his childhood in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, to his twilight years in that same town. In between are World Series highs and lows, brawls, five marriages, a near-death experience and 270 major league victories.