Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870

Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 PDF Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786490012
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
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.

Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870

Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 PDF Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786490012
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Base Ball Founders

Base Ball Founders PDF Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786474300
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
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.

The Louisville Grays and the Myth of Baseball's First Great Scandal

The Louisville Grays and the Myth of Baseball's First Great Scandal PDF Author: Wendell Lloyd Jones
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476694389
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The National League was in its second season of existence in 1877. In mid-season, the Louisville Grays suddenly took the league by storm and by mid-August were considered a lock to win the pennant. Then, disaster struck. The Grays fell out of first place, and the pennant was lost. Suspicions were high that the club had sold out to gamblers. Three players were tricked into confessing to the selling of exhibition games and were blacklisted from the sport along with a fourth player who refused to cooperate with the investigation. Since then, historians have presented a simple narrative about how the Grays sold the pennant to gamblers, how that treachery was discovered, and the steps that followed. However, none of this is true. For nearly 150 years the story of the Louisville Grays has been told, and the story has been wrong. For the first time, the objective evidence that was there all along is examined in comparison to the narrative that has been told about the Grays. The evidence shows the Grays did not sell the pennant; they simply lost it. This is the story of how Major League Baseball's first great scandal never truly happened.

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 7

Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 7 PDF Author: John Thorn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476614369
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
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.

A Companion to American Sport History

A Companion to American Sport History PDF Author: Steven A. Riess
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118609409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 921

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Book Description
A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history. Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)

The Louisville Grays and the Myth of Baseball's First Great Scandal

The Louisville Grays and the Myth of Baseball's First Great Scandal PDF Author: Wendell Lloyd Jones
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476651841
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The National League was in its second season of existence in 1877. In mid-season, the Louisville Grays suddenly took the league by storm and by mid-August were considered a lock to win the pennant. Then, disaster struck. The Grays fell out of first place, and the pennant was lost. Suspicions were high that the club had sold out to gamblers. Three players were tricked into confessing to the selling of exhibition games and were blacklisted from the sport along with a fourth player who refused to cooperate with the investigation. Since then, historians have presented a simple narrative about how the Grays sold the pennant to gamblers, how that treachery was discovered, and the steps that followed. However, none of this is true. For nearly 150 years the story of the Louisville Grays has been told, and the story has been wrong. For the first time, the objective evidence that was there all along is examined in comparison to the narrative that has been told about the Grays. The evidence shows the Grays did not sell the pennant; they simply lost it. This is the story of how Major League Baseball's first great scandal never truly happened.

Cracking Baseball's Cold Cases

Cracking Baseball's Cold Cases PDF Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476603316
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book is the result of one man's twenty-year quest to solve some of baseball's most enduring mysteries--the "cold cases" of major leaguers about whom virtually nothing is known. (In many instances, the various baseball encyclopedias list only their names and one other word: "deceased.") Some of these mysterious players had negligible professional careers and their time on a major league diamond was more the result of good fortune than anything else; others were stars in their day and then vanished. The Biographical Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research is committed to finding them and award-winning researcher Peter Morris tells the story of some of the most remarkable of the searches that resulted, many of which featured twists so surprising no mystery writer could have invented them.

The Haymakers, Unions and Trojans of Troy, New York

The Haymakers, Unions and Trojans of Troy, New York PDF Author: Jeffrey Michael Laing
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078649493X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
The Troy Haymakers were a pioneer baseball team legendary for exploits on and off the field. Formed in 1860 in Troy, New York--a rapidly growing industrial city--the team was embraced by the tough-minded Trojans as emblematic of their vigorous boomtown, rivaling larger, better established cities. The Haymakers were a strong amateur club before becoming a charter member of baseball's first major league, the National Association, and subsequently gaining a franchise in the National League. The team rosters were filled with characters and scalawags along with talented players, including four future Hall of Famers. After losing its National League franchise in 1882, Troy fielded minor league teams for 34 years--with a wistful eye to Haymaker history.

Barney Dreyfuss

Barney Dreyfuss PDF Author: Brian Martin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476644187
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A young German immigrant, Barney Dreyfuss was an American success story in business and in baseball. He fell in love with the game after settling in Paducah, Kentucky, where he discovered he had a knack for assembling good players on the diamond. Relocating to Louisville, he became involved in the professional game with the Colonels. Faced with ouster from the National League, he took his players to Pittsburgh, where he became owner of the Pirates and forged a winning tradition, leading the club to six pennants and two World Series. This first biography of Dreyfuss chronicles the innovative career of the Hall of Famer executive who built Forbes Field--the National League's first concrete-and-steel ballpark, into which he put $1 million of his own money--pushed for creation of the office of commissioner to govern the game and helped initiate the modern World Series.

Before They Were the Cubs

Before They Were the Cubs PDF Author: Jack Bales
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476674671
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Founded in 1869, the Chicago Cubs are a charter member of the National League and the last remaining of the eight original league clubs still playing in the city in which the franchise started. Drawing on newspaper articles, books and archival records, the author chronicles the team's early years. He describes the club's planning stages of 1868; covers the decades when the ballplayers were variously called White Stockings, Colts, and Orphans; and relates how a sportswriter first referred to the young players as Cubs in the March 27, 1902, issue of the Chicago Daily News. Reprinted selections from firsthand accounts provide a colorful narrative of baseball in 19th-century America, as well as a documentary history of the Chicago team and its members before they were the Cubs.