The National Pastime has made big news and big money since its Silver Age (1900-1920), but what old-timer would have dreamed of TV networks bidding tens of millions for camera time, of baseballers getting paid like movie stars, or of all concerned--players, managers, owners, even umpires--having their lives exposed in intimate detail by keyhole journalists? So far the great American game has survived media hype, as this book shows, with the same vitality that brought it through the doldrums of World Wars I and II and the Great Depression and that withstood the shocks of racial integration...