Through extensive interviews and archival research, Joe Clark has uncovered the engaging details of Australian baseball’s unique, and often turbulent, 125-year history, and for the first time the dynamic story of Australian baseball is told. Initially accepted only grudgingly in the late nineteenth century as an off-season substitute for cricket, baseball in Australia steadily rose in prominence. Starting with neighborhood games played between improvised teams, the sport grew to include state and national leagues and a spirited international competition. Both the shortcomings and the triumphs of Australian baseball are revealed in A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, from an ill-fated late-nineteenth-century baseball tour of America and the political firestorm surrounding the formation of the Australian Baseball League in the 1990s, to the amazing defeat of the powerhouse Cuban team in the Intercontinental Cup of 1999.

Baseball Beyond Our Borders celebrates the globalization of the game while highlighting the different histories and cultures of the nations in which the sport is played. This collection of essays tells the story of America's national pastime as it has spread across the world and undergone instructive, entertaining, and sometimes quirky changes in the process. Covering nineteen countries and a U.S. territory, the contributors show how each country imported baseball, how baseball took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed, and what local and regional traits tell us about the sport's place in each culture. But what lies in store as baseball's passport fills up with far-flung stamps? Will the international migration of players homogenize baseball? What role will the World Baseball Classic play? These are just a few of the questions the authors pose.

This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.

Presenting views from a variety of sport and history experts, Baseball in America and America in Baseball captures the breadth and unsuspected variety of our national fascination and identification with America's Game. Chapters cover such well-known figures as Ty Cobb and lesser-known topics like the "invisible" baseball played by Japanese Americans during the 1930s and 1940s. A study of baseball in rural California from the Gold Rush to the turn of the twentieth century provides an interesting glimpse at how the game evolved from its earliest beginnings to something most modern observers would find familiar. Chapters on the Negro League's Baltimore Black Sox, financial profits of major league teams from 1900 to 1956, and American aspirations to a baseball-led cultural hegemony during the first half of the twentieth century round out this superb collection of sport history scholarship. Baseball in America and America in Baseball belongs on the bookshelf of any avid student of the game and its history. It also provides interesting glimpses into the sociology of sport in America.

Dating back to 1869 as an organized professional sport, the game of baseball is not only the oldest professional sport in North America, but also symbolizes much more. Walt Whitman described it as “our game, the American game,” and George Will compared calling baseball “just a game” to the Grand Canyon being “just a hole.” Countless others have called baseball “the most elegant game,” and to those who have played it, it’s life. The Historical Dictionary of Baseball is primarily devoted to the major leagues it also includes entries on the minor leagues, the Negro Leagues, women’s baseball, baseball in various other countries, and other non-major league related topics. It traces baseball, in general, and these topics individually, from their beginnings up to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on the roles of the players on the field—batters, pitchers, fielders—as well as non-playing personnel—general managers, managers, coaches, and umpires. There are also entries for individual teams and leagues, stadiums and ballparks, the role of the draft and reserve clause, and baseball’s rules, and statistical categories. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of baseball.

"A gentleman when the game was hard-bitten, played by rough-and-ready lads out to win whatever the cost...." Australia had few sporting heroes in the years preceding its federation in 1901. But before its 20th-century Olympic trailblazers, and Depression-era icons such as Phar Lap and Don Bradman, came an Australian sporting pioneer who was celebrated on the most glamorous stage in the world--American major league baseball. Joe Quinn's story has long been lost in the land of his birth. This tale gallops from the deprivation of famine-ravaged Ireland through colonial Australia to the raucous ballfields of 19th-century America, with their unruly players and owners, brawls and adulation and backroom betrayals. Through 17 seasons in the major leagues, "Undertaker" Joe Quinn earned his place among the colorful characters who pioneered the modern game of baseball, as much for his ability to stand apart from their bad behavior as for his steadfastness on the field. Meet Australia's first professional baseball player and manager, whose willingness to "have a go" in the grand Australian tradition will live long in the minds of sports fans on both sides of the Pacific.

A comprehensive analysis of the entire 2007 baseball season from the first pitch to the last out, including a breakdown of the post season and the World Series. Key features include: ? Reviews of how 2005 played out in each of baseball's six divisions ? An in-depth look at the minor leagues ? Detailed team stats and graphs ? Team-by-team individual hitting and fielding numbers ? A postseason and World Series round up

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way.” From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, we see baseball's role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. And from Albert Spalding and baseball's first World Tour to Bud Selig and the World Baseball Classic, we witness the globalization of America's national pastime and baseball's role in spreading the American dream. Besides describing baseball's frequent and often surprising connections to America's presence around the world, Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself and asks whether baseball can play a positive role or rather only reinforce America's dominance around the globe. Like Franklin Foer in How Soccer Explains the World, Elias is driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals. His seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that's about more than just sports.

A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history. Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)

Inspired and led by sporting magnate Albert Goodwill Spalding, two teams of baseball players circled the globe for six months in 1888-1889 competing in such far away destinations as Australia, Sri Lanka and Egypt. These players, however, represented much more than mere pleasure-seekers. In this lively narrative, Zeiler explores the ways in which the Spalding World Baseball Tour drew on elements of cultural diplomacy to inject American values and power into the international arena. Through his chronicle of baseball history, games, and experiences, Zeiler explores expressions of imperial dreams through globalization's instruments of free enterprise, webs of modern communication and transport, cultural ordering of races and societies, and a strident nationalism that galvanized notions of American uniqueness. Spalding linked baseball to a U.S. presence overseas, viewing the world as a market ripe for the infusion of American ideas, products and energy. Through globalization during the Gilded Age, he and other Americans penetrated the globe and laid the foundation for an empire formally acquired just a decade after their tour.