Dead Balls And Double Curves

Author : Trey Strecker
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0809325624

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Dead Balls and Double Curves by Trey Strecker Pdf

Dead Balls and Double Curves: An Anthology of Early Baseball Fiction collects twenty-two classic stories from baseball’s youth, presented in chronological order to capture the development of this most American of sports. Many of these tales have never before been reprinted, adding historical value to the rich literary merits of this anthology. Editor Trey Strecker’s collection begins with an informal village match in an excerpt from James Fenimore Cooper’s Home as Found (1838), published the year prior to Abner Doubleday’s alleged invention of the game outside Cooperstown, New York, and concludes with the arrival of the superstar slugger that signaled the end of the dead-ball era in Heywood Broun’s The Sun Field (1923). The sampling of fiction from the eighty-five-year interim loads the bases with the humor, realism, and athletic gallantry of the sport’s earliest years. Not all grandstanding and heroism, these stories also explore cultural and class conflicts, racial strife, town rivalries, labor disputes, gambling scandals, and the striking personalities that decorated a simple game’s evolution into a national pastime. Dead Balls and Double Curves presents a lineup of first-division writers, including Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Christy Mathewson, Edna Ferber, and the game’s poet laureate, Ring Lardner, plus legendary characters such as Baseball Joe, South-Paw Skaggs, Tin Can Tommy, and the sole artiste of the mythic double curve, Frank Merriwell. Throughout the volume, each author’s abiding affection for the game and its characters shines through with diamond-like focus.

Author : Leonard Cassuto,Stephen Partridge
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2011-02-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521761826

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The Cambridge Companion to Baseball by Leonard Cassuto,Stephen Partridge Pdf

From Babe Ruth to the Black Sox scandal, this Companion examines baseball's history, global identity, current challenges and memorable personalities.

Author : Peter Carino
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2004-03-19
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0786418516

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Baseball/Literature/Culture by Peter Carino Pdf

Since 1995, the Indiana State University Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has provided a venue for scholars to present their research on baseball as literary subject matter and cultural institution. Nineteen essays presented at the 2002 and 2003 ISU conferences are published in this work. The essays demonstrate that baseball continues to engage scholars like no other sport, despite the game's supposed loss of stature as the national game. "A Field of Questions: W.P. Kinsella comes to Ithaca," reveals Kinsella as baseball fan and baseball writer. "'You don't play the angles, you're a sap': John Sayles, Eliot Asinof, Baseball Labor, and Chicago in 1919" examines Sayles' Eight Men Out in the context of both Asinof's historical account of the fix and Sayles' earlier and openly labor-oriented film Maetwan. "Is Baseball an American Religion?" considers three codified, sociological definitions of religion and demonstrates that to claim baseball is an American religion requires more than just a strong attraction to the game. "Baseball Immortals: Character and Performance On and Off the Field" analyzes how character and performance impact fan and media perceptions as well as in terms of a player's candidacy for the Hall of Fame. These are just a few of the essays, which cover a broad range of topics and take a variety of approaches to those topics.

Author : John J. Evers,Hugh S. Fullerton
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2004-12-30
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780786418695

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Touching Second by John J. Evers,Hugh S. Fullerton Pdf

Johnny Evers was widely considered the brainiest ballplayer of his day and, along with Ty Cobb, one of the most guileful and cantankerous. (He and Joe Tinker, two thirds of the famous double-play combination, battled each other nearly as viciously and as often as they did their opponents.) One of the great practitioners of the inside game, Evers was quick to pick up on the unwatched-for advantage that might upend his opponent and propel his team to victory. In 1910's Touching Second, Evers and sports writing great Hugh Fullerton describe the game as it was played during the first decade of the 20th century. With an emphasis on what Evers saw as baseball's development "into an exact mathematical sport," he describes the great plays and players, shares "anecdotes and incidents of decisive struggles on the diamond," and discusses "the signs and systems used by championship teams."

Author : Cindy Thomson,Scott Brown
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2006-01-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780803244481

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Three Finger by Cindy Thomson,Scott Brown Pdf

On October 8, 1908, Mordecai Brown clutched a half-dozen notes inside his coat pocket. The message of each was clear: We’ll kill you if you pitch and beat the Giants. A black handprint marked each note, the signature of the Italian Mafia. Mordecai Brown—dubbed “Three Finger” because of a childhood farm injury—was the dominant pitcher for the great Chicago Cubs team of the early twentieth century, a team that from 1906 through 1910 was arguably the best in baseball history. Brown’s handicap enabled him to throw pitches with an unconventional movement that left batters bewildered—the curve ball that Ty Cobb once called “the most devastating” he had ever faced. How Brown responded to the Mafia’s threats in 1908 mirrored the way he took life in general: with unflappable courage and resolve. Telling his story for the first time, Cindy Thomson and Scott Brown trail Mordecai from the Indiana countryside to the coal mines, from semipro ball to the Majors, from the World Series mound back down to the Minors. Along the way they retrieve the lost lore of one of baseball’s greatest pitchers—and chronicle one man’s determination to reach a dream that most believed was unreachable.

Author : Trey Strecker,,Steven P. Gietschier,Mitchell Nathanson
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2015-01-09
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781476618890

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Understanding Baseball by Trey Strecker,,Steven P. Gietschier,Mitchell Nathanson Pdf

The study of baseball history and culture shows the national pastime to be a forum of debate where issues of sport, labor, race, character and the ethics of work and play are decided. An understanding of baseball calls for consideration of different perspectives. This very readable textbook offers insights into baseball history as a subject worthy of scholarly attention. Each chapter introduces a specific disciplinary approach—history, economics, media, law and fiction—and poses representative questions scholars from these fields would consider. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Author : Ronald E. Kates,Warren Tormey
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2008-02-26
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780786436804

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Baseball/Literature/Culture by Ronald E. Kates,Warren Tormey Pdf

The Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. Essays presented at the 2006 and 2007 conferences are published in this work. Topics covered include early baseball journalism; sportswriting as mythology; the Henry Wiggen baseball novels; fictionalized baseball broadcasts; racism, religious fundamentalism, patriotism and Marxism; Philip Roth's The Great American Novel; Zane Grey; masculinity in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out; Willie Mays; Northern Exposure; Salvadore Dali and surrealism; baseball's economic trendsetters; Pete Rose; baseball literature in the classroom; and Jim Bunning's perfect game, among others.

Author : Ronald E. Kates,Warren Tormey
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2012-11-14
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781476600888

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Baseball and Social Class by Ronald E. Kates,Warren Tormey Pdf

This collection of fresh essays examines the intersection of baseball and social class, pointing to the conclusion that America's game, infused from its origins with a democratic mythos and founded on high-minded principles of meritocracy, is nonetheless fraught with problematic class contradictions. Each essayist has explored how class standing has influenced some aspect of the game as experienced by those who play it, those who watch it, those who write about it, and those who market it. The topic of class is an amorphous one and in tying it to baseball the contributors have considered matters of race, education, locality, integration, assimilation, and cultural standing. These elements are crucial to understanding how baseball creates, preserves, reinforces and occasionally assails class divisions among those who watch, play, and own the game.

Author : Charles Einstein
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2004-02-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780809388837

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Willie's Time by Charles Einstein Pdf

To a generation of fans, Willie Mays was the greatest ballplayer they had ever seen. The prowess and speed of the Say Hey Kid were unmatched on the diamond before his time, prompting Joe DiMaggio to label him, “ the closest you can come to perfection.” He was the first player to hit fifty home runs and steal twenty bases in a single season. Mays played for the New York Giants (1951– 1957), San Francisco Giants (1958– 1972), and New York Mets (1972– 1973), and in his glory days with the Giants he not only set the major league mark for consecutive seasons by appearing in 150 games or more but by winning his two MVP awards a record twelve seasons apart. When Mays retired, he ranked third in career home runs (behind Aaron and Ruth), a record of 660 soon to be surpassed by Mays’ s godson, Barry Bonds. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the only ballplayer biography ever named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Willie’ s Time: Baseball’ s Golden Age, restores to print Charles Einstein’ s vivid biography of one of the game’ s foremost legends. With a new preface from the author, this volume replays the most dramatic moments of the Say Hey Kid’ s career— from the 1951 Miracle Giants to the Amazing Mets of 1973— and takes us inside the lives of Ruth, DiMaggio, Aaron, Durocher, and others along the way. Einstein offers a compelling and complete look at Mays: as a youth in racist Birmingham, a triumphant symbol of African American success, a sports hero lionized by fans, and yet all the while, still a very human figure destined to play for two decades amid baseball’ s Golden Age.

Author : Fred Lieb
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0809326191

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The Baltimore Orioles by Fred Lieb Pdf

With a legacy that spans two fiercely loyal baseball towns a half-nation apart, the Baltimore Orioles--originally the St. Louis Browns--rank among baseball's most storied teams. One of the fifteen celebrated team histories commissioned by G. P. Putnam's Sons in the 1940s and 1950s, The Baltimore Orioles: The History of a Colorful Team in Baltimore and St. Louis chronicles the club's early history and is reissued on the fiftieth anniversary of their first season in Baltimore. Hall of Fame sportswriter Frederick G. Lieb begins with the history of baseball in Baltimore from its pre-Civil War beginnings and its major-league debut as the Lord Baltimores in 1872 to the championship seasons of the National League Orioles in 1894, '95, and '96 when the roster included Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Kid Gleason, Roger Bresnahan, Joe McGinnity, and John McGraw. After the turn of the century, Baltimore was briefly home to the Orioles of the American League in 1901-02, then, after losing its franchise to New York, had to settle for the AAA International League Orioles until 1954. Under the leadership of Jack Dunn, the minor-league Orioles, while developing the talents of Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, and other future major-league stars, won seven straight International League pennants from 1919 to 1926. Here, too, is the colorful history of the precursors to the current Orioles, the lovable and luckless St. Louis Browns, augmented for this edition with a new foreword from St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg on the escapades of the Brownies. Though they lost more than a thousand games and captured only a single pennant in fifty-three seasons, the Browns remain a legendary part of national lore. Taking their lead in different eras from larger-than-life figures such as Branch Rickey, Rogers Hornsby, Urban Shocker, and the Barnum of Baseball, Bill Veeck, the Browns "boasted a one-armed outfielder, a hired hypnotist, the mighty midget [Eddie Gaedel] and--even the best ballplayer in the land--George Sisler," as Broeg recalls in his foreword. In 1944, the Browns also played in the only all-St. Louis World Series, losing to the Cardinals. Originally published in 1955 and featuring twenty-two photographs, The Baltimore Orioles history concludes with the new American League team's first season in Baltimore, finishing seventh in the league but garnering the lasting adoration of their new hometown.

Author : David Vaught
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-17
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781421408330

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The Farmers' Game by David Vaught Pdf

A journey through the national pastime’s roots in America’s small towns and wide-open spaces: “An absorbing read.” —The Tampa Tribune In the film Field of Dreams, the lead character gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening, just as the star pitcher takes the mound. In The Farmers’ Game, David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes—presenting the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although—contrary to legend—Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught’s deeply researched exploration of baseball’s rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.

Author : Jean Hastings Ardell
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2005-03-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0809326272

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Breaking Into Baseball by Jean Hastings Ardell Pdf

While baseball is traditionally perceived as a game to be played, enjoyed, and reported from a masculine perspective, it has long been beloved among women—more so than any other spectator sport. Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime upends baseball’s accepted history to at last reveal just how involved women are, and have always been, in the American game. Through provocative interviews and deft research, Jean Hastings Ardell devotes a detailed chapter to each of the seven ways women participate in the game—from the stands as fans, on the field as professionals or as amateur players, behind the plate as umpires, in the front office as executives, in the press box as sportswriters and reporters, or in the shadows as Baseball Annies. From these revelatory vantage points, Ardell invites overdue appreciation for the affinity and talent women bring to baseball at all levels and shows us our national game anew. From its ancient origins in spring fertility rituals through contemporary marketing efforts geared toward an ever-increasing female fan base, baseball has always had a feminine side, and generations of women have sought—and been sought after—to participate in the sport, even when doing so meant challenging the cultural mores of their era. In that regard, women have been breaking into baseball from the very beginning. But recent decades have witnessed great strides in legitimizing women’s roles on the diamond as players and umpires as well as in vital management and media roles. In her thoughtfully organized and engagingly written survey, Ardell offers a chance for sports enthusiasts and historians of both genders to better appreciate the storied and complex relationship women have so long shared with the game and to glimpse the future of women in baseball. Breaking into Baseball is augmented by twenty-four illustrations and a foreword from Ila Borders, the first woman to play more than three seasons of men’s professional baseball.

Author : Fitts, Robert K.
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Baseball
ISBN : 0809389738

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Remembering Japanese Baseball by Fitts, Robert K. Pdf

Author : Myron J. Smith
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Reference
ISBN : UOM:39015069290271

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The Baseball Bibliography by Myron J. Smith Pdf

"With over 57,000 entries, this two-volume set is the most comprehensive non-electronic, non-database, print bibliography on any American sport. Represented here are books and monographs, scholarly papers, government documents, doctoral dissertations, masters' theses, poetry and fiction, novels, pro team yearbooks, college and professional All-Star Game and World Series programs, commercially produced yearbooks, and periodical and journal articles"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Mark Pattison,David Raglin
Publisher : SABR, Inc.
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2024-05-21
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781933599458

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Detroit Tigers 1984 by Mark Pattison,David Raglin Pdf

The 1984 Detroit tigers roared out of the gate, winning their first nine games of the season and compiling an eye-popping 35-5 record after the campaign’s first 40 games--still the best start ever for any team in major league history. The tigers led wire-to-wire in 1984, becoming only the third team in the modern era of the majors to have done so. And Detroit’s determination and tenacity resulted in a sweep of the Kansas City Royals in the AL playoffs and a five-game triumph over the San Diego Padres in the World Series. And Tigers fans will tell you that the bottom of the eighth inning in Game Five was the first time Kirk Gibson hit an iconic home run in the Fall Classic. Detroit Tigers 1984: What a Start! What a Finish!, an effort by the society of American Baseball research’s BioProject Committee, brings together biographical profiles of every Tiger from that magical season, plus those of field management, top executives, the broadcasters--even venerable Tiger Stadium and the city itself.