Chronicles the 1913-1915 battle between baseball's newly-formed Federal League versus the established National and American leagues, and discusses the short- and long-term impact on the game.

In late 1913 the newly formed Federal League declared itself a major league in competition with the established National and American Leagues. Backed by some of America’s wealthiest merchants and industrialists, the new organization posed a real challenge to baseball’s prevailing structure. For the next two years the well-established leagues fought back furiously in the press, in the courts, and on the field. The story of this fascinating and complex historical battle centers on the machinations of both the owners and the players, as the Federals struggled for profits and status, and players organized baseball’s first real union. Award winning author, Daniel R. Levitt gives us the most authoritative account yet published of the short-lived Federal League, the last professional baseball league to challenge the National League and American League monopoly.

A biography of Charles Webb Murphy, the ebullient and mercurial owner of the Chicago Cubs from 1905 through 1914.

The 1994 Major League Baseball season promised to be memorable. Long-standing batting and pitching standards were threatened, including the revered single-season home run record. The Montreal Expos and New York Yankees were delivering remarkable campaigns. In August, acting commissioner Bud Selig called a halt to the season amid the League's latest labor dispute. The shutdown led to a lockout as well as cancellation of more than 900 regular season games, the scheduled expanded rounds of playoffs, and that year's World Series. Like all labor struggles, it was fundamentally about control--of salaries, of players' ability to decide their own fates, and of the game itself. This book chronicles Major League Baseball's turbulent '94 season and its ripple effects. It highlights earlier labor struggles and the roles performed by individuals from John Montgomery Ward, David Fultz and Robert Murphy to Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Jim "Catfish" Hunter and Donald Fehr. Also examined are the ballplayers' own organizations, from the Players League of the early 1890s to the still potent Major League Baseball Players Association doing battle with team owners and their representatives.

Series # 2 is from my three book, a baseball trilogy, detailing the Historical Record of the 1926 Copper League as Documented from the life experience of John Lawrence Smirch as a Copper League ball player, Highlighting twelve full games inning by inning ball games and the historical events that took place in this Southwest Outlaw League 100 years ago. The 1926 Copper League as it happened.

Selected from the two most recent proceedings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture (2019 and 2021), this collection of essays explores subject matter centered both inside and beyond the ballpark. Fifteen contributors offer critical commentary on a range of topics, including controversial decisions on the field and in Hall of Fame elections; baseball's historical role as a rite of passage for boys; two worthy catchers who never received their due; the genesis and development of the minor leagues; and baseball's place in popular culture.

The last independent major league ended its brief run in 1915, after only two seasons at the national pastime’s top level. But no competitor to establishment baseball ever exerted so much influence on its rival, with some of the most recognizable elements of the game today—including the commissioner system, competition for free agents, baseball’s antitrust exemption, and even the beloved Wrigley Field—traceable to the so-called outlaw organization known as the Federal League of Base Ball Clubs. This comprehensive history covers the league from its formation in 1913 through its buyout, dissolution, and legal battles with the National and American leagues. The day-to-day operation of the franchises, the pennant races and outstanding players, the two-year competitive battle for fans and players, and the short- and long-term impact on the game are covered in detail.

James T. Farrell and Baseball is a social history of baseball on Chicago’s South Side, drawing on the writings of novelist James T. Farrell along with historical sources. Charles DeMotte shows how baseball in the early decades of the twentieth century developed on all levels and in all areas of Chicago, America’s second largest city at the time, and how that growth intertwined with Farrell’s development as a fan and a writer who used baseball as one of the major themes of his work. DeMotte goes beyond Farrell’s literary focus to tell a larger story about baseball on Chicago’s South Side during this time—when Charles Comiskey’s White Sox won two World Series and were part of a rich baseball culture that was widely played at the amateur, semipro, and black ball levels. DeMotte highlights the 1919–20 Black Sox fix and scandal, which traumatized not only Farrell and Chicago but also baseball and the broader culture. By tying Farrell’s fictional and nonfictional works to Chicago’s vibrant baseball history, this book fills an important gap in the history of baseball during the Deadball Era.

This is the first book-length biography of Ned Hanlon, a Hall of Famer but yet an underappreciated figure in baseball history. As a first generation Irish-American, Ned Hanlon left behind a childhood in the cotton mills to become a star player in the major leagues and the famous manager of the colorful 1890s Baltimore Orioles. He traveled the world on an all-star team and was a key member of the first attempt by baseball players to unionize, which led to the creation of the upstart Players' League. Hanlon was an innovative and shrewd tactician whose strategies and ideas helped baseball transition from its rough infancy into the modern game we know today. As one of the premier baseball minds of his time, "Foxy Ned" also exerted a profound influence on the sport through the managerial tree he established, which includes Hall of Fame managers such as John McGraw, Miller Huggins, and Connie Mack.

On October 20, 1923, at New York's Belmont Park, Kentucky Derby champion Zev toed the starting line alongside Papyrus, winner of England's greatest horse race, the Epsom Derby. The $100,000 purse for the novel intercontinental showdown was the largest in the history of America's oldest sport and writers across the country were calling it the "Race of the Century." A victory for the American colt in this blockbuster event would change how the nation viewed horse racing forever. In this book, James C. Nicholson exposes the central role of politics, money, and ballyhoo in the Jazz Age resurgence of the sport of kings. Though the Zev-Papyrus face-off was one of the most hyped sporting events of the early twentieth century, Nicholson reveals that it soon faded from American popular memory when it became known that Zev's owner, oil tycoon Harry F. Sinclair, was involved in an infamous scandal to defraud the United States of millions of barrels of publicly owned oil. As a result, Zev became an apt mascot for a nation struggling to reconcile its traditional values with the modern complexities of the Roaring Twenties, and his tainted legacy ultimately proved to be incompatible with tenets of national mythology that celebrate America as a place where hard work and fair play lead to prosperity.