A collection of essays which "describe developments in the game's past, assess their impact, and explain how they reflect the period in which they occurred; ... explore baseball's influences outside the field of play as well as the effect of external factors on the game; ... [and] discuss such key issues as demographics, communities, social mobility, race and ethnicity."--Cover.

Although on the decline, the threat of gambling on games continued menacing baseball in the 1880s. One issue that certainly was not in decline, however, was the abuse of umpires. Arguments and rows between players, fans, and umpires ranks among the most important issues in the game in this decade. Several major fights broke out every season. Many times, umpires narrowly escaped with their life. At least twice, they killed fans in their own self-defense. How did the situation grow so serious? Equally regrettably, the 1880s was the decade in which baseball drew its color line, banning African Americans from the game. Even after that decision, however, racism showed its face in more subtle ways. Learn how prejudice continued to mar the game throughout the decade, especially when it came to baseball's treatment of mascots.

At the end of the 1883 baseball season, things looked rosy--attendance had skyrocketed and the National League and American Association were at peace. A year later, however, the sport was in total disarray. A third major league, the Union Association, had come on the scene and waged a bitter war that rocked the baseball world. By the dawn of the 1885 season, the UA had dissolved in a sea of red ink, the AA had dropped four teams, and the minor leagues were desperately hoping to make it through the season.Amid the chaos of 1884 were some historic moments. Iron-man pitcher Hoss Radbourn won 59 games and led the Providence Grays to victory over the New York Metropolitans in the first World Series. Fleet Walker broke baseball's first color line. There were a record eight no-hitters and a cast of fascinating figures--some famous, some lost to history--like Radbourn, Hustling Horace Phillips, Dan O'Leary, and Edward (The Only) Nolan. This book tells the story of the momentous yet overshadowed 1884 season.

Frommer's latest book takes us to the birthplace of America's most beloved sport. Starting from baseball's humble beginnings, Frommer vividly introduces the reader to the trailblazing personalities that shaped baseball's history. From the first games in Madison, New York to the rise of the National League, Frommer vividly recreates the energy of this early time. Frommer's expertise lends itself to tell the magical story of baseball's history and insight into an era that is not to be forgotten.

The story of baseball in America begins not with the fabled Abner Doubleday but with a generation of mid-nineteenth-century Americans who moved from the countryside to the cities and brought a cherished but delightfully informal game with them. But Didn't We Have Fun? will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about baseball's origins. Peter Morris, author of the prizewinning A Game of Inches, takes a fresh look at the early amateur years of the game. Mr. Morris retrieves a lost eraand a lost way of life. Offering a challenging new perspective on baseball's earliest years, and conveying the sense of delight that once pervaded the game and its players, Mr. Morris supplants old myths with a story just as marvelous-but one that reallyhappened. With 25 rare photographs and drawings.

It's been more than a century since Connecticut had big league baseball, but in the 1870s, Middletown, Hartford, and New Haven fielded professional teams that competed at the highest level. By the end of the decade, when the state's final big league team, Mark Twain's beloved Hartford Dark Blues, left the National League, baseball's transition from amateur pastime to major league sport had been accomplished. And Connecticut had played a significant role in its development. The history of the Nutmeg State's three major league teams is described here in full, and the author thoughtfully examines their influence within the regional baseball scene.

When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball's beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. 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 game was played. In The Players, you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.

After the 1889 baseball season, the players of the National League, furious over their treatment by NL owners, decided to secede from the National League and start their own rival league, the Players League. Their league lasted only one season, but its formation remains one of the seminal events in understanding the trajectory of nineteenth-century baseball. Why is this true? By learning why the players of the NL elected to strike out on their own, we gain insight into some of the critical issues facing the game in the late 1880s, particularly the relationship between team owners and their players. However, that's not all. Had a few things gone differently, the Players League might have succeeded. Had it done so, the entire history of major league baseball would have been vastly different. Therefore, understanding the motivations of the players gives us a glimpse of both what was, and what might have been. Put simply, baseball history in the 1890s is incomprehensible without knowledge of the 1890 Players League and how it began.