This entertaining history blends anecdote, incident, and analysis as it chronicles the story of our national pastime.
Charles C. Alexander covers the advent of the first professional baseball leagues, the game's surge in the early twentieth century, the Golden Twenties and the Gray Thirties, the breaking of the color line in the late forties, and the game's expansion to its current status as a premier team sport. He describes changing playing styles and outstanding teams and personalities but also demonstrates the many connections between baseball--as game, sport, and business--and the evolution of tastes, values, and institutions in the United States.
Charles C. Alexander, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Ohio University, has published several important works of American intellectual and cultural history in addition to his acclaimed baseball books Our Game: An American Baseball History, Rogers Hornsby: A Biography, and Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era.