Kategoria BISAC: Sports & Recreation >> Baseball - History

At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a purer past, G. Edward White shows how seemingly irrational business decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century. It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with drinking and gambling. White describes its progression...

Over baseball history, which park has been the best for run scoring?¹ Which player would lose the most home runs after adjustments for ballpark effect?² Which player claims four of the top five places for best individual seasons ever played, based on all-around offensive performance.³ (See answers, below).

These are only three of the intriguing questions Michael Schell addresses in Baseball's All-Time Best Sluggers, a lively examination of the game of baseball using the most sophisticated statistical tools available. The book provides an...

During the Civil War, Americans from homefront to battlefront played baseball as never before. While soldiers slaughtered each other over the country's fate, players and fans struggled over the form of the national pastime. George Kirsch gives us a color commentary of the growth and transformation of baseball during the Civil War. He shows that the game was a vital part of the lives of many a soldier and civilian--and that baseball's popularity had everything to do with surging American nationalism.

By 1860, baseball was poised to emerge as the American sport. Clubs in...

Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the...

The well-told baseball story has long been a staple for baseball fans. In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends, Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball--stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob...

Baseball bloopers are fun; they're funny, even. A pitcher slips on the mound and his pitch sails over the backstop. An infielder camps under a pop-up...and the ball lands ten feet away. An outfielder tosses a souvenir to a fan...but that was just the second out, and runners are circling the bases (and laughing). Without these moments, the highlight reels wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. Baseball blunders, however, can be tragic, and they will leave diehard...

Feeding the Monster shows what it takes to win a championship, both on and off the field. Seth Mnookin spent mornings in the front office, afternoons in the clubhouse, and evenings in the owners' box. He learned how the Sox persuaded Curt Schilling to sign, why Nomar Garciaparra resented his teammates, and what led to Pedro Martinez's acrimonious exit. He knows...

There have been only fifteen perfect games pitched in the modern era of baseball: The great Cy Young fittingly hurled the first one, in 1904, and Randy Johnson pitched the last one, in May 2004. In between, some great and famous pitchers--Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Jim Bunning, and Don Larsen--performed the feat, as did those lesser-known, like Charlie Robertson and Len Barker. Fifteen in 160,000 games: The odds are staggering....

Fenway Park, Saturday, 8/30/03: Yankees versus Red Sox. Not just a special day in a historic rivalry but a unique one in the long tradition of baseball writing. For on this day award-winning sportswriter Steve Kettmann worked with a team of top reporters to chronicle everything that happened, from the...