How did the business of professional baseball fare during World War II? The sport, like many nonessential industries, struggled to find its place in society during a time of war. The men who ran the game faced government interference and manpower shortages that threatened to shut down their businesses for the duration, and they had to balance the need to show a patriotic front to the public while at the same time protecting their investments. Archival and primary sources provide insight into the perceptions of the major league owners and an understanding of how most of them were able to keep their businesses profitable while the nation fought an enormous two-front war.

Stories of Sports: Critical Literacy in Media Production, Consumption, and Dissemination discusses how media demonstrates privilege, policing, stereotypes, confirmation bias, and objectification in a world where the role of athletics in Western society speaks to privilege and power. Contributors use a critical media lens to analyze texts, including newspapers, magazines, film, television, social media, and sportscasts to demonstrate to readers the ways in which sports stories reinforce or disrupt patterns of power and the ways that power is enacted. This book questions the role of the sports-industrial complex in our society and argues that, while healthy competition and physical health can come from bodily exertion, corruption can contaminate these benefits with the wielding of influence and the acquisition of cultural and financial capital. Contributors examine how the ways that resources are allocated, the coverage of certain sports and athletes, and how viewers view competitive arenas speak to power and privilege in ways that can affect both athletes and athletic stakeholders, highlighting the importance of critically examining sports media. Scholars of media studies and sports will find this book particularly useful.

On a chilly Sunday, December 7, 1941, major league baseball’s owners gathered in Chicago for their annual winter meetings, just two months after one of baseball’s greatest seasons. For the owners, the attack on Pearl Harbor that morning was also an attack on baseball. They feared a complete shutdown of the coming 1942 season and worried about players they might lose to military service. But with the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the national pastime continued. The Nats and the Grays: How Baseball in the Nation’s Capital Survived WWII and Changed the Game Forever examines the impact of the war on the two teams in Washington, DC—the Nationals of the American League and the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues—as well as the impact of the war on major league baseball as a whole. Each chapter is devoted to a wartime year, beginning with 1941 and ending with the return of peacetime in 1946, including the exciting American League pennant races of 1942-1945. This account details how the strong friendship between FDR and Nationals team owner Clark Griffith kept the game alive throughout the war, despite numerous calls to shut it down; the constant uncertainties the game faced each season as the military draft, federal mandates, national rationing, and other wartime regulations affected the sport; and the Negro Leagues’ struggle for recognition, solvency, and integration. In addition to recounting the Nationals’ and the Grays’ battles on and off the field during the war, this book looks beyond baseball and details the critical events that were taking place on the home front, such as the creation of the GI Bill, the internment of Japanese Americans, labor strikes, and the fight for racial equality. World War II buffs, Negro League historians, baseball enthusiasts, and fans of the present-day Washington Nationals will all find this book on wartime baseball a fascinating and informative read.

How did the business of professional baseball fare during World War II? The sport, like many nonessential industries, struggled to find its place in society during a time of war. The men who ran the game faced government interference and manpower shortages that threatened to shut down their businesses for the duration, and they had to balance the need to show a patriotic front to the public while at the same time protecting their investments. Archival and primary sources provide insight into the perceptions of the major league owners and an understanding of how most of them were able to keep their businesses profitable while the nation fought an enormous two-front war.

This collection of nine essays examines some of baseball's most elusive mysteries. Topics include the discovery of the body of Ed Delahanty at the bottom of Niagara Falls, the suicide of Chick Stahl, the strange death of National League president Harry Pulliam, the case of a game that may never have been played, three gambling scandals (one involving Hall of Famers), the facts concerning the legendary matchup of Satchel Paige and slugger Josh Gibson, and the intrigue behind the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles.

On the eve of World War II, baseball truly was America's national pastime. Little could anyone predict the changes and sacrifices that would be imposed on the sport during the early 1940s. As the war was coming to an end in 1945 and a jubilant mood was overtaking the country, baseball was back in full swing and the Chicago Cubs were on top of their game. How did the Cubs clinch the pennant in 1945 and go to the World Series? Simply, they fielded, hit, and pitched better than any other team in the league. How did they then lose the championship to the Detroit Tigers, a team with one of the most mediocre records in pennant history? And why haven't they been back since? Billington's fast-paced narrative of this historic season includes an inning-by-inning account of critical games, highlights of winning streaks and road trips, and a discussion of how and why the team ultimately unravels. Incorporating statistical analysis, descriptions of key teams, and player biographies, Billington paints an evolving and exciting portrait of the 1945 Cubs and the wider national baseball scene of a war-torn era. I don't care who wins, as long as it's the Cubs!—legendary announcer, Bert Wilson, WIND On the eve of World War II, baseball truly was America's national pastime. Little could anyone predict the changes and sacrifices that would be imposed on the sport during the early 1940s. As the war was coming to an end in 1945 and a jubilant mood was overtaking the country, baseball was back in full swing and the Chicago Cubs were on top of their game. How did the Cubs clinch the pennant in 1945 and go to the World Series? Simply, they fielded, hit, and pitched better than any other team in the league. How did they then lose the championship to the Detroit Tigers, a team with one of the most mediocre records in pennant history? And why haven't they been back since? One thing is clear: 1945, the last time the Cubs went to the World Series, was a turning point in the team's fortune. For in the first half of the twentieth century, few teams were as good as Chicago; in the second half, few teams were as bad. Between 1900 and 1945 the Chicago Cubs won the National League pennant ten times and had more first division finishes than any other team in the league and only one last-place finish. Between 1946 and 1990, the Chicago Cubs finished in the National League basement nine times, and went 20 consecutive seasons in the second division between 1947 and 1966. Charles N. Billington's fast-paced narrative of this historic season includes an inning-by-inning account of critical games, highlights of winning streaks and road trips, and a discussion of how and why the team ultimately unravels. Incorporating statistical analysis, descriptions of key teams, and player biographies, Billington paints an evolving and exciting portrait of the 1945 Cubs and the wider national baseball scene of a war-torn era.

The triumphant story of baseball and America after World War II. In 1945 Major League Baseball had become a ghost of itself. Parks were half empty, the balls were made with fake rubber, and mediocre replacements roamed the fields, as hundreds of players, including the game's biggest stars, were serving abroad, devoted to unconditional Allied victory in World War II. But by the spring of 1946, the country was ready to heal. The war was finally over, and as America's fathers and brothers were coming home, so too were the sport's greats. Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Joe DiMaggio returned with bats blazing, making the season a true classic that ended in a thrilling seven-game World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. America also witnessed the beginning of a new era in baseball: it was a year of attendance records, the first year Yankee Stadium held night games, the last year the Green Monster wasn't green, and, most significant, Jackie Robinson's first year playing in the Brooklyn Dodgers' system. The Victory Season brings to vivid life these years of baseball and war, including the littleknown "World Series" that servicemen played in a captured Hitler Youth stadium in the fall of 1945. Robert Weintraub's extensive research and vibrant storytelling enliven the legendary season that embodies what we now think of as the game's golden era.

Mark Dolan is reinventing himselfagain. He was a major-league baseball pitcher, a career cut short by an arm injury, and then he became a freelance detective, a career often marked by bloodshed and broken bones. Now, he hopes to take up the quiet life of a suburban husband and father. His plans explode when his wife contracts a rare virus while working overseas. She is treated with a new drug, marketed by a major pharmaceutical company, and she quickly plunges into a deep coma. While she clings to life, Dolan embarks on a quest to find out more about the drug she took and the people who produced it. The journey takes him from New York to Washington to a ramshackle testing center in Miamiand then ever deeper into the seamy underside of the US drug industry. The stakes get higher when a relentless killer, hired by the drug companies, arrives to put an end to Dolans search. He and the killer stalk each other from city to city, heading for a final showdown that can only end with one of them dead.

Most books that study professional sports concentrate on teams and leagues. In contrast, Home Team studies the connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where teams play. It examines the relationships between the four major professional team sports--baseball, basketball, football, and hockey--and the cities that attach their names, their hearts, and their increasing amount of tax dollars to big league teams. From the names on their uniforms to the loyalties of their fans, teams are tied to the places in which they play. Nonetheless, teams, like other urban businesses, are affected by changes in their environments--like the flight of their customers to suburbs and changes in local political climates. In Home Team, professional sports are scrutinized in the larger context of the metropolitan areas that surround and support them. Michael Danielson is particularly interested in the political aspects of the connections between professional sports teams and cities. He points out that local and state governments are now major players in the competition for franchises, providing increasingly lavish publicly funded facilities for what are, in fact, private business ventures. As a result, professional sports enterprises, which have insisted that private leagues rather than public laws be the proper means of regulating games, have become powerful political players, seeking additional benefits from government, often playing off one city against another. The wide variety of governmental responses reflects the enormous diversity of urban and state politics in the United States and in the Canadian cities and provinces that host professional teams. Home Team collects a vast amount of data, much of it difficult to find elsewhere, including information on the relocation of franchises, expansion teams, new leagues, stadium development, and the political influence of the rich cast of characters involved in the ongoing contests over where teams will play and who will pay. Everyone who is interested in the present condition and future prospects of professional sports will be captivated by this informative and provocative new book.

"Chronicles the media and public's prominent role in baseball's union movements between 1885 and 1981"--