Ranking just below the top major and minor leagues in the first half of the twentieth century was another group of quality circuits. The Southern Association, which was formed in 1901 and had teams in several prominent Southern cities, was part of that group. In the mid 1930s, league directors decided to make the old Southern League, which had enjoyed an off-and-on existence since 1885, part of the Southern Association. This work is a complete history of the Southern Association, beginning with 1885, the year the Southern League began, and ending with 1961, the year it went out of business. Each chapter covers one year of the Southern Association's history and contains an essay describing a team, player, or trend in that particular year, and a list of teams in order of winning percentage. Details provided for each team include its record, winning percentage, the number of games it finished behind first place, its manager, and a list of its known players, their positions and statistics. The statistics for hitters include games played, at bats, runs, hits, RBIs, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, strikeouts, stolen bases, and batting average. Pitchers are listed separately and listed in order of games won. Statistics for pitchers include wins, losses, winning percentage, games played and started, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, hits allowed, walks, strikeouts, and ERAs.

 The Birmingham Black Barons were a nationally known team in baseball's Negro leagues from 1920 through 1962. Among its storied players were Hall of Famers Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Mule Suttles. The Black Barons played in the final Negro Leagues World Series in 1948 and were a major drawing card when barnstorming throughout the United States and parts of Canada. This book chronicles the team's history and presents the only comprehensive roster of the hundreds of men who wore the Black Barons uniform.

Professional baseball in Little Rock dates back to 1895. Fans in Arkansas' capital city have been entertained by Travelers' baseball for parts of three centuries. Using only one team name and playing on just two home fields, the Travelers have displayed stability unique in minor league baseball. The team is fan owned, another rarity in professional sports. Baseball in Little Rock follows the team's long diamond history, from the struggles of the Southern Association through the triumphs of the Texas League.

In 1908 baseball was the only game that mattered in the South. With no major league team in the region, rivalries between Southern Association cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans were heated. This season, however, no city was as baseball-crazed as Nashville, whose Vols had been league doormat in 1907. After an unpromising start, the Nashville club clawed its way into contention during the month of July, rising into the upper division, then into a battle for first. Local interest intensified, as the competitive fire of Nashville fans was stoked by sharp-tongued columnist Grantland Rice and the city's three daily newspapers. By the time the Vols met the New Orleans Pelicans for a season-ending series, and the championship, the city was gripped by a pennant fever that shut down the commercial district. Nearly 13,000 people thronged the Nashville ballpark, Sulphur Dell, for the third and deciding contest. What they saw was described by Rice as "the greatest game ever played in Dixie."

A strong-armed devastating spitball pitcher from rural Tennessee who once won 16 games with the Boston Braves, Hub Perdue is better remembered today as one of the clown princes of the Deadball Era. Often compared with fellow player-comedians Germany Schaefer, Nick Altrock, and Rabbit Maranville, Perdue had a quick wit and a rebellious streak that amused teammates but sometimes led to conflicts with management and umpires. ("Mix 'em up!" manager George Stallings had told him, encouraging the weak-hitting pitcher to take his at-bats more seriously; Perdue, a right-hander, dutifully took his strikeouts from alternating sides of the plate.) His penchant for the subversive--he was also a players' union representative who freely dispensed advice on contracts and negotiation--might in fact have curtailed what had been a promising big league career. But his antics in the majors and minors became the stuff of legend, known as "Hublore."

This book presents season-by-season information for the original South Atlantic Baseball League, which operated for 60 years in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. (In 1963, with the collapse of the Southern Association, the league was promoted to Double-A status and renamed the Southern League.) Each chapter opens with a season summary and is followed by league standings, team records and rosters, and statistics for each player.

Robert Dean Emslie spent fifty-six of his eighty-four years in professional baseball, eight as a player and forty-nine as an umpire. His thirty-five seasons as a National League umpire included the three most contentious decades umpires ever faced, the 1890 to 1920 era, when the game transitioned from amateur to professional sport.

Indiana boasts a rich baseball tradition, with 10 native sons enshrined in Cooperstown. This biographical dictionary provides a close look at the lives of all 364 Hoosier big leaguers, who include New York City's first baseball superstar; the first rookie pitcher to win three games in a World Series; the man who caught most of Cy Young's record 511 career wins; one of the game's first star relievers; the player who held the record for consecutive games played before Lou Gehrig; an obscure infielder mentioned in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip; baseball's only one-legged pitcher; Indiana's first Mr. Basketball, who became one of baseball's greatest pinch-hitters; the first African American to play for the Cincinnati Reds; the only pitcher to throw a perfect game in the World Series; the skipper of the 1969 "Miracle Mets"; the pitcher for whom a ground-breaking surgical procedure is named; and the only two men to have played in both the World Series and the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Rickwood Field’s Hall of Fame Lineup: Babe Ruth, John McGraw, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastremski, Ernie Banks, Harmon Killebrew, “Cool Papa” Bell, Josh Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Grover Cleveland Alexander. Best-selling sports historian Allan Barra takes us on an unforgettable journey to Birmingham, Alabama, where America’s oldest ballpark, would look—were it not for the new paint job—almost identical to when the gates first opened almost a century ago. Evoking such classics as Shoeless Joe and The Boys of Summer, Rickwood Field recalls a simpler, bygone era when a weathered ballpark was, and still is, a rare beacon of hope.

Baseball has left a rich legacy on the city of Atlanta, as generations of people have enjoyed the sport as spectators and players in both amateur and professional leagues. In addition to being a source of enjoyment and regional pride, Atlanta's baseball teams have had a huge economic and cultural impact, and their stadiums have altered the face of the city. Baseball in Atlanta explores the sport through 200 rare and vivid photographs from the collections of the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.