BiblioVault - Books about Baseball

Saying It's So

A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal

Daniel A. Nathan

University of Illinois Press, 2002

The story of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his White Sox teammates purportedly conspiring with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds has lingered in our collective consciousness for a century. Daniel A. Nathan's wide-ranging history looks at how journalists, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and baseball fans have represented and remembered the scandal. Nathan's reflections on what these different cultural narratives reveal about their creators and eras shape a fascinating study of cultural values, memory, and the ways people make meaning.

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Seasons in the Sun

The Story of Big League Baseball in Missouri

Roger D. Launius

University of Missouri Press, 2002

The heart of professional baseball, if not its roots, may be found in the American Midwest, especially in Missouri. In Seasons in the Sun, Roger D. Launius offers an excellent overview of the teams, pennant races, trials, and triumphs of the different major-league teams that have resided in the state over the years.

Since 1876, when St. Louis became a charter member of the newly formed National League, there have also been other major-league franchises from less well known leagues in St. Louis. The St. Louis major-league baseball experience is not limited to the extraordinary success and fame of the Cardinals, who have won more World Series championships than any other National League team. St. Louis also claims the excellent but short-lived Brown Stockings, the city’s first entry into the National League; the American League’s Browns, who spent most of their existence in the first half of the twentieth century at the bottom of the standings; the virtually forgotten Terriers of the Federal League in 1914-1915; and the Maroons of the pre-twentieth-century National League.

On the other side of the state, Kansas City was home to one of the premier franchises of the Negro Leagues, the Kansas City Monarchs. The Monarchs were members of the Negro National League between 1920 and 1931, and won the Negro World Series in 1924 plus a host of league championships thereafter. Independent barnstormers between 1932 and 1936, they were part of the Negro American League from 1937 to1959. In addition, Kansas City hosted the American League’s Athletics for thirteen seasons between the team’s glory years in Philadelphia and Oakland. The A’s departed in 1967, but in 1969 the Royals replaced them as Kansas City’s American League entry. The Royals contended for the pennant within three years of their creation, then won a string of division championships in the late 1970s, the American League pennant in 1980, and the World Series against the cross-state Cardinals in 1985.

Major-league baseball has a long and significant history in the state of Missouri, and Launius has done a superb job of telling its story through words and pictures. As the first work to encapsulate this rich history of statewide major-league activities, Seasons in the Sun will be welcomed by baseball fans everywhere.

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Shakespeare and Baseball

Reflections of a Shakespeare Professor and Detroit Tigers Fan

Samuel Crowl

Ohio University Press, 2024

Shakespeare and baseball are monuments of high and popular culture: Shakespeare is the most widely read and staged playwright in the world, and baseball is America’s game. Professor Samuel Crowl, a prize-winning teacher and international scholar of Shakespeare on film, explores his life as a champion of the Bard and a fan of the Detroit Tigers. He saw his first Tigers game in the summer of 1950 (Hal Newhouser beat the Chicago White Sox) and his first Shakespeare play in 1953 (Alec Guinness as Richard III at Ontario’s Stratford Festival) and has spent almost seventy-five years enjoying and writing about the pleasures of play that each provides. Shakespeare and Baseball is an unusual hybrid combining Crowl’s education as a Shakespeare and baseball fan, the resonances he perceives between the playwright and the game, the unexpected pleasures both forms of play have afforded his extended family of children and grandchildren, and a selection from the seventy letters he has written to them about Tigers games he has seen, from old Tiger Stadium, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, and ballparks in Cleveland. Crowl finds unexpected connections between his twin subjects, including beer, which funded and fueled both the establishment of Major League baseball clubs, like the Yankees and Cardinals, and the creation of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, visited by Shakespeare enthusiasts from around the world. A deeper linkage is that Shakespeare’s festive comedies kept the ideas, rituals, and customs of rural England alive in the dense urban world of Elizabethan London, just as baseball kept the image of the garden—the rural American past in which the game took shape—alive in the twentieth-century American city. The book is written in a style that captures what one reader has called Crowl’s “warm, rich midwestern voice” and will be of interest to fans of the game and of the Bard, from high schoolers on up.

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The Sizzler

George Sisler, Baseball's Forgotten Great

Rick Huhn

University of Missouri Press, 2013

“Gorgeous George” Sisler, a left-handed first baseman, began his major-league baseball career in 1915 with the St. Louis Browns. During his sixteen years in the majors, he played with such baseball luminaries as Ty Cobb (who once called Sisler “the nearest thing to a perfect ballplayer”), Babe Ruth, and Rogers Hornsby. He was considered by these stars of the sport to be their equal, and Branch Rickey, one of baseball’s foremost innovators and talent scouts, once said that in 1922 Sisler was “the greatest player that ever lived.”

During his illustrious career he was a .340 hitter, twice achieving the rare feat of hitting more than .400. His 257 hits in 1920 is still the record for the “modern” era. Considered by many to be one of the game’s most skillful first basemen, he was the first at his position to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet unlike many of his peers who became household names, Sisler has faded from baseball’s collective consciousness.

Now in The Sizzler, this “legendary player without a legend” gets the treatment he deserves. Rick Huhn presents the story of one of baseball’s least appreciated players and studies why his status became so diminished. Huhn argues that the answer lies somewhere amid the tenor of Sisler’s times, his own character and demeanor, the kinds of individuals who are chosen as our sports heroes, and the complex definition of fame itself.

In a society obsessed with exposing the underbellies of its heroes, Sisler’s lack of a dark side may explain why less has been written about him than others. Although Sisler was a shy, serious sort who often shunned publicity, his story is filled with its own share of controversy and drama, from a lengthy struggle among major-league moguls for his contractual rights—a battle that helped change the structure of organized baseball forever—to a job-threatening eye disorder he developed during the peak of his career and popularity.

By including excerpts from Sisler’s unpublished memoir, as well as references to the national and international events that took place during his heyday, Huhn reveals the full picture of this family man who overcame great obstacles, stood on high principles, and left his mark on a game he affected in a positive way for fifty-eight years.

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Spitting on Diamonds

A Spitball Pitcher's Journey to the Major Leagues, 1911-1919

Clyde H. Hogg

University of Missouri Press, 2005

Spitball n., an illegal pitch in which a foreign substance (spit or Vaseline) is applied to the ball by the pitcher before it is thrown.

Dead ballera n., a time period during baseball, usually regarded as 1900–1919, when the game used a "dead" or almost soft ball during play. Usually, the same ball was used for the entire game.

In 1911, when Bradley Hogg began his major-league pitching career for the National League’s Boston Rustlers, baseball was a different game. Hogg played during a time known as the dead ball era, when a pitcher could spit on, shine up, or even roughen a ball to secure an advantage over a hitter. Although only seven World Series had been played at that point, the names of the best and most colorful players remain familiar today: Cy Young, Casey Stengel, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, and Christy Mathewson.

During his major and minor league career, Hogg played with or against twenty-seven Hall of Fame ballplayers and under the critical gaze of two Hall of Fame umpires and eleven Hall of Fame sportswriters. In Spitting on Diamonds, Clyde Hogg details the life of baseball’s everyman, including excerpts from newspapers throughout the country to bring to life the times in which Bradley Hogg played. The author shows how Hogg’s career is representative of the thousands of men who have played professional baseball since its inception more than 125 years ago, men who didn’t make it into the Hall of Fame or win awards but made it possible for millions of fans to enjoy the game. These players were the flannelled hosts of America’s favorite pastime and the ones who made the game what it was and is today.

The author uses Hogg’s career as a spitball pitcher in leagues from coast to coast to show the rapid change and growth of our nation between 1910 and 1920. With enough baseball statistics to satisfy even the most hard-core fan, this time capsule of early-twentieth-century America will appeal to sports enthusiasts and readers of general historical nonfiction alike. They will find in its pages an America now visible only in faded photographs, along with a version of the national pastime that no longer exists. Featuring multiple bunts, double steals, inside pitching, and the now outlawed “spitball,” as well as the skill it took to hit such deliveries, this game was hard, fast, and nonstop. Spitting on Diamonds lets the reader understand what it was like to live and play professional sports when America and its national pastime were coming of age.

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The St. Louis Baseball Reader

Richard Peterson

University of Missouri Press, 2022

The St. Louis Baseball Reader is a tale of two teams: one the city’s lovable losers, the other a formidable dynasty.

The St. Louis Cardinals are the most successful franchise in National League history, while the St. Louis Browns were one of the least successful, yet most colorful, American League teams. Now Richard Peterson has collected the writings of some of baseball’s greatest storytellers to pay tribute to both these teams. His book, the first anthology devoted exclusively to the Cardinals and Browns, covers the rich history of St. Louis baseball from its late-nineteenth-century origins to the modern era.

The St. Louis Baseball Reader is a celebration of the many legendary stars and colorful characters who wore St. Louis uniforms and the writers who told their stories, including Alfred Spink, Roger Angell, George Will, and Baseball Hall of Fame writers Bob Broeg, J. Roy Stockton, Red Smith, and Fred Lieb. Here, too, are John Grisham, who grew up a Redbirds fan in Mississippi, and Jack Buck, the most identifiable voice in Cardinal history. Great players—Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Marty Marion, and Satchel Paige—tell their own stories, while Bill Veeck offers an account of his wild ride as the last Browns owner and Whitey Herzog shares regrets about the play that cost the Cardinals the 1985 World Series.

From the days of the Gas House Gang to the 1944 “Streetcar Series,” from Bill Veeck’s legendary stunts to Mark McGwire’s pursuit of Roger Maris’s home-run record, the Reader will bring back memories for every fan. It takes in all of the magic of the ballpark—whether recounting the unhittable pitching of Bob Gibson, the slugging prowess of Stan “The Man” Musial, or the sterling glove-work of Ozzie Smith—along with reflective commentaries that tell how Jackie Robinson confronted racism and Curt Flood challenged the reserve clause.

St. Louis is a city blessed with a memorable baseball history, and The St. Louis Baseball Reader perfectly captures the joy and heartbreak of its winning and losing teams. It’s a book that will delight current fans of the Cardinals and old-timers who fondly recall the Browns.

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The Stars Are Back

The St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox, and Player Unrest in 1946

Jerome M. Mileur

Southern Illinois University Press, 2013

In 1946, as the aftershocks of World War II still trembled across the globe, America returned to its favorite pastime: baseball. In The Stars Are Back, Jerome M. Mileur offers a fascinating account of this storied season and of the backstage battle that would forever transform the game of professional baseball. Mileur begins with one of the most famous clashes in major league history: the neck-and-neck race to the National League pennant between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers. As these two iconic teams engaged in a bitter struggle leading to the first-ever playoff to determine the winner of the National League pennant, the Boston Red Sox blazed a trail to the top of the American League to face the Cardinals in the World’s Series, as it was then called.

But while the nation was riveted by the return of its beloved baseball heroes, the game behind the scenes was just as dramatic. As the threat of unionization loomed and the Mexican League continued to lure players away from the United States with lucrative contracts, tensions between players and team owners mounted. The result was a standoff for control of the game that would culminate in the Magna Carta of baseball and the creation of standard contracts for players, ushering in the modern era of baseball.

Set against the backdrop of a country recovering from war, facing the new adversary of Communism, and absorbing the emotional impact of the atomic bomb, The Stars Are Back tells the story of a nation hungry for a return to normalcy and a game poised on the brink of new horizons.

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Stolen Bases

Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball

Jennifer Ring

University of Illinois Press, 2013

This history of women in baseball demonstrates that, far from being strictly a men's sport, baseball has long been enjoyed and played by Americans of all genders, races, and classes since it became popular in the 1830s. The game itself was invented by English girls and boys, and when it immigrated to the United States, numerous prominent women's colleges formed intramural teams and fielded intensely spirited and powerful players. With the professionalization of the sport in the late nineteenth century, however, American boys and men shoved girls off the diamonds and sandlots. Girls have been fighting to get back in the game ever since.

Jennifer Ring questions the forces that try to keep girls who want to play baseball away from the game. Focusing on a history that, unfortunately, repeats itself, Ring describes the circumstances that twice stole baseball from American girls: once in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and again in the late twentieth century, after it was no longer legal to exclude girls who wanted to play. In the early twentieth century, Albert Goodwill Spalding--sporting goods magnate, baseball player, and promoter--declared baseball off limits for women and envisioned global baseball on a colonialist scale, using the American sport to teach men from non-white races and non-European cultures to become civilized and rational. And by the late twentieth century, baseball had become serious business for boys and men at all levels, with female players perceived as obstacles or detriments to rising male players' chances of success.

Stolen Bases also looks at the backgrounds of American softball, which was originally invented by men who wanted to keep playing baseball indoors during cold winter months but has become the consolation sport for most female players. Throughout her analysis, Ring searches for ways to rescue baseball from its arrogance and sense of exclusionary entitlement.

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Suds Series

Baseball, Beer Wars, and the Summer of '82

J. Daniel

University of Missouri Press, 2023

In Suds Series, J. Daniel takes readers back forty years, telling a story that is part baseball history, part urban history, and part U.S. cultural history, the narrative weaving together the development of the Midwest cities of St. Louis and Milwaukee through their engagement with beer and baseball. As the National and American League champions squared off for the 1982 Fall Classic, the St. Louis Cardinals, owned by Anheuser-Busch, took on the Milwaukee Brewers, so named by owner Bud Selig in homage to the city’s baseball and brewing past.

Even nominal baseball fans will enjoy reading about legendary players, teams, and personalities that emerged in the 1982 season: the year Ricky Henderson stole 130 bases; Reggie Jackson led the league in home runs; and Cal Ripken Jr. began his remarkable playing streak. Readers will also enjoy the cultural references, including the Pac-Man craze, a chart-topping album by Rush, and the “Light Beer Wars” waged by Anheuser-Busch and the Miller Brewing Company through a series of humorous TV commercials featuring well-loved professional sports figures.

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Suicide Squeeze

Taylor Hooton, Rob Garibaldi, and the Fight against Teenage Steroid Abuse

William C. Kashatus

Temple University Press, 2016

Appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs—specifically, anabolic steroids (APEDs)—provide a tempting competitive advantage for amateur baseball players. But this shortcut can exact a fatal cost on talented athletes. In his urgent book Suicide Squeeze, William Kashatus chronicles the experiences of Taylor Hooton and Rob Garibaldi, two promising high school baseball players who abused APEDs in the hopes of attracting professional scouts and Division I recruiters. However, as a result of their steroid abuse, they ended up taking their own lives.

In Suicide Squeeze—named for the high-risk play in baseball to steal home—Kashatus identifies the symptoms and dangers of steroid use among teens. Using archival research and interviews with the Hooton and Garibaldi families, he explores the lives and deaths of these two troubled young men, the impact of their suicides on MLB, and the ongoing fight against adolescent APED use by their parents.

A passionate appeal to prevent additional senseless deaths by athletes, Suicide Squeeze is an important contribution to debates on youth and sports and on public policy.

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A Summer Up North

Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball

Jerry Poling

University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

June 12, 1952—only a local sportswriter showed up at the Eau Claire airport to greet a newly signed eighteen-year-old shortstop from Alabama toting a cardboard suitcase. "I was scared as hell," said Henry Aaron, recalling his arrival as the new recruit on the city’s Class C minor league baseball team.
Forty-two years later, as Aaron approached the stadium where the Eau Claire Bears once played, an estimated five thousand people surrounded a newly raised bronze statue of a young "Hank" Aaron at bat. "I had goosebumps," he said later. "A lot of things happened to me in my twenty-three years as a ballplayer, but nothing touched me more than that day in Eau Claire." For the people of Eau Claire, Aaron’s summer two years before his Major League debut with the Milwaukee Braves symbolizes a magical time, when baseball fans in a small city in northern Wisconsin could live a part of the dream.

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