Baseball’s spread across Illinois paralleled the sport’s explosive growth in other parts of the country. Robert D. Sampson taps a wealth of archival research to transport readers to an era when an epidemic of “base ball on the brain” raged from Alton to Woodstock. Focusing on the years 1865 to 1869, Sampson offers a vivid portrait of a game where local teams and civic ambition went hand in hand and teams of paid professionals displaced gentlemen’s clubs devoted to sporting fair play. This preoccupation with competition sparked rules disputes and controversies over imported players while the game itself mirrored society by excluding Black Americans and women. The new era nonetheless brought out paying crowds to watch the Rock Island Lively Turtles, Fairfield Snails, and other teams take the field up and down the state.

A first-ever history of early baseball in Illinois, Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins adds the Prairie State game’s unique shadings and colorful stories to the history of the national pastime.

Robert D. Sampson is the editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and the author of John L. O’Sullivan and His Times.

Acknowledgments

Prologue  A Dying Ember

First Inning  Baseball Fever and Pioneers

Second Inning  Organizing Clubs, Funding, Travel, and the Game’s Rituals

Third Inning  Playing Fields, Gambling, and Injuries

Fourth Inning  The Game and Its Players

Fifth Inning  Sharing the Fun

Sixth Inning  Barriers of Race and Gender

Seventh Inning  Trouble in Baseball’s Eden

Eighth Inning  Representative Teams

Ninth Inning   The Thrill Departs

Epilogue  Ghosts

Appendix A  Illinois Baseball Teams, 1865-70

Appendix B  Bloomington’s Fifth Ward School-Grounds Neighborhood

Appendix C  Illinois Baseball Players, 1865-70

Notes

Bibliography

Index