America grew rapidly after World War II-the national pastime followed suit. Baseball dramatically changed from a 19th century pastoral relic to a continental modern sport. Six Major League clubs relocated to new cities, capped by the coast-to-coast moves of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. Four expansion teams were created from thin air. Dozens of black stars emerged after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. The players formed a union-higher salaries materialized. This book tells the story of baseball's metamorphosis 1945-1962, driven by larger-than-life personalities like the bombastic Larry MacPhail, the sage Branch Rickey, the kindly Connie Mack, the quick-witted Bill Veeck and the wily Walter O'Malley-Hall of Famers all. The upheaval they sparked-and sometimes failed to control-would broaden the sport's appeal, setting the stage for tremendous growth in the half-century to come.

In The 50 Greatest Players in Philadelphia Phillies History, sports historian Robert W. Cohen ranks the top 50 players ever to perform for one of Major League Baseball's most iconic and historic franchises. This work includes quotes from the subjects themselves and former teammates, photos, recaps of memorable performances, as well as a statistical summary of each player's career with the Phillies. The team's best are profiled here in what is sure to be a much discussed book among the Phillies' broad fan base. An added bonus is the "honorable mentions," the next 25 players who have contributed to the Phillies' astounding run as one of America's great sports teams.

This book analyzes and highlights the development and success of major league baseball teams in the National League and the American League, focusing on each team's performance in seasons and postseasons and to what extent each succeeded as a business enterprise despite competition for market share from other types of entertainment. The book discusses historical and financial information about the 30 major league franchises. Each chapter contains two core themes-Team Performances and Franchise Business. The former highlights which and how teams won division and league championships and World Series while the latter lists and compares financial data including their revenue, gate receipts, and operating income and describes interesting business topics. Each chapter also provides an overview of when each franchise organized and why it joined MLB, a brief profile of its current majority owner or ownership group, records of teams' special coaches and players, attendances at home games, and how their ballparks rank as a venue for fans. Baseball Business explains why particular teams located in large, midsized, or small markets win more games and titles than others and when and how frequently that occurs. Furthermore, it provides ways to compare franchises' financial success individually, by division, and by league. By linking and comparing the historical performances of MLB teams to financial information about them as business organizations, this book offers a unique contribution to the literature on the sports industry.

An unorthodox history of baseball told through the enthralling stories of the game's objects, equipment, and characters. No sport embraces its wild history quite like baseball, especially in memorabilia and objects. Sure, there are baseball cards and team pennants. But there are also huge balls, giant bats, peanuts, cracker jacks, eyeblack, and more, each with a backstory you have to read to believe. In THE 34-TON BAT, Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin tells the real, unvarnished story of baseball through the lens of all the things that make it the game that it is. Rushin weaves these rich stories - from ballpark pipe organs played by malevolent organists to backed up toilets at Ebbets Field - together in their order of importance (from most to least) for an entertaining and compulsive read, glowing with a deep passion for America's Pastime. The perfect holiday gift for casual fans and serious collectors alike, THE 34-TON BAT is a true heavy hitter.

During 75 seasons of baseball (1946-2020), 71 teams in 21 minor leagues represented 35 Canadian cities, playing either under the aegis of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (called Minor League Baseball since 1999) or independently. Sixteen teams operated for less than a year, including the eight teams of the Canadian Baseball League of 2003. Another 14 lasted three seasons or less. Seven have played continuously for 20 years or more, among them the Winnipeg Goldeyes of the independent Northern League and American Association, with 27 consecutive seasons since 1994. Chronicling their year-by-year fortunes, this history includes accounts of individual award winners, former Negro League players and future Hall-of-Famers, and traces of the rise and fall of independent league teams and the exodus of Canadian teams to the U.S.

Eddie Plank won 326 games and has the most complete games and shutouts by a left-handed pitcher in Major League history. But how much do we know about the hurler best known as "Gettysburg Eddie" in his playing days? And what of him that we do know is factual? This biography of Plank sorts out the truth and the myths--and everything in between--as he made his way from a college team in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, all the way to the Hall of Fame, 20 years after his death. Along the way, readers will discover what made Plank so great, the secrets behind his famous crossfire delivery, and more.

The Big Red Machine dominated major league baseball in the 1970s, but the Cincinnati franchise began its climb to that pinnacle in 1961, when an unlikely collection of cast-offs and wannabes stunned the baseball world by winning the National League pennant. Led by revered manager Fred Hutchinson, the team featured rising stars like Frank Robinson, Jim O'Toole, and Vada Pinson, fading stars like Gus Bell and Wally Post, and a few castoffs who suddenly came into their own, like Gene Freese and 20-game-winner Joey Jay. In time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their pennant-winning season, the amazing story of the "Ragamuffin Reds" is told from start to finish in Before the Machine. Written by long-time Reds Report editor Mark J. Schmetzer and featuring dozens of photos by award-winning photographer Jerry Klumpe of the Cincinnati Post & Times Star, this book surely will be a winner with every fan in Reds country and coincides with an anniversary exhibit at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. Through interviews and research, Before the Machine captures the excitement of a pennant race for a team that had suffered losing seasons in 14 of the past 16 years. Schmetzer also beautifully evokes the time and place--a muggy Midwestern summer during which, as the new song of the season boasts, "the whole town's batty for that team in Cincinnati." Led by regional talk-show star Ruth Lyons (the Midwest's "Oprah") fans rallied around the Reds as never before. The year didn't begin well for the team. Budding superstar Frank Robinson was arrested right before spring training for carrying a concealed weapon, and long-time owner Powel Crosley Jr., died suddenly just days before the start of the season. Few experts--or fans--gave the Reds much of a chance at first place anyway. With powerhouse teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee, the National League pennant was unlikely to fly over Cincinnati's Crosley Field. But manager Hutchinson somehow galvanized his motley crew and led them to victory after victory. Joey Jay, who had languished with the Braves, mowed down hitters while his rotation mates O'Toole and knuckleballer Bob Purkey did the same. The team also featured a dynamic duo in the bullpen in Bill Henry and Jim Brosnan, whose book about the season, Pennant Race, became a national bestseller the following year. As the rest of the league kept waiting for the Reds to fade, Hutch's boys kept winning--and finally grabbed the pennant. Though they couldn't continue their magic in the World Series against the Yankees, the previously moribund Reds franchise did continue to their success throughout the decade, winning 98 games in 1962 and falling just short of another pennant in 1964. They established a recipe for success that would lead, a few years later, to the emergence of the Big Red Machine.

The decades between the late 1960s counterculture and the advent of steroid use in the late 1980s bought tumult to Major League Baseball. Dock Ellis (Pirates, Yankees) and Dick Allen (Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, White Sox) epitomized the era with recreational drug use (Ellis), labor strife (Allen), and the questioning of authority. Both men were Black Power advocates at a time when the movement was growing in baseball. In the 1970s and 1980s, Marvin Miller and the Major League Baseball Players Association fought numerous, mostly victorious battles with MLB and team owners. This book chronicles a turbulent period in baseball, and in American life, that led directly to the performance-enhancing drug era and dramatically changed nature of the game.

In his day, perhaps no one in baseball was better known than Irish-born Timothy Paul "Ted" Sullivan. For 50 years, America's sportswriters sang his praises, genuflected to his genius and bought his blarney by the barrel. Damon Runyon dubbed him "The Celebrated Carpetbagger of Baseball." Cunning, fast-talking, witty and sober, Sullivan was the game's first player agent, a groundbreaking scout who pulled future Hall of Famers from the bushes, an author, a playwright and a baseball evangelist who promoted the game across five continents. He coined the term "fan" and was among the first to suggest the designated hitter-because pitchers were "a lot of whippoorwill swingers." But he was also a convert to the Jim Crow attitudes of his day-black ballplayers were unimaginable to him. Unearthing thousands of contemporaneous newspaper accounts, this first exhaustive biography of "Hustlin'" Ted Sullivan recounts the life and career of one of the greatest hucksters in the history of the game.

A left-handed batter in the NCAA's Division 1, Max Gordon still had a lot to live for, provided he would live at all. Facing a devastating loss-the death of his brother, Nick-and a life-threatening physical injury, he went on a transformative personal journey that united his family through the most difficult time they had ever faced. In this intimate narrative about the healing power of sports, a family is made whole again through the determination of a son who lost his brother, proving that in life as in baseball, no matter the score, as long as you have one more at bat, you're still in the game. The authors, brothers Jacob and Dylan Kornhauser, tell the story from a familiar perspective of having shared relationships with the Gordon brothers.

In 1954, one year after Baltimore bought the St. Louis Browns, the New York Yankees hired former Browns executive and owner William O. DeWitt as assistant to general manager George Weiss. "DeWitt," the paper announced, "was considered an astute baseball man who would have a definite role to play with the Yankees." Baseball fans had assumed that once the Yankees were no longer the American League's doormats, DeWitt would quietly retire. But DeWitt, a protege of Branch Rickey, was shrewd and intelligent and his years with the Browns were only the beginning of a long and fascinating career, including his years as owner and general manager of the Cincinnati Reds. This first ever biography focuses on the life and career of a baseball executive who contributed greatly to America's pastime.

A young German immigrant, Barney Dreyfuss was an American success story in business and in baseball. He fell in love with the game after settling in Paducah, Kentucky, where he discovered he had a knack for assembling good players on the diamond. Relocating to Louisville, he became involved in the professional game with the Colonels. Faced with ouster from the National League, he took his players to Pittsburgh, where he became owner of the Pirates and forged a winning tradition, leading the club to six pennants and two World Series. This first biography of Dreyfuss chronicles the innovative career of the Hall of Famer executive who built Forbes Field-the National League's first concrete-and-steel ballpark, into which he put $1 million of his own money-pushed for creation of the office of commissioner to govern the game and helped initiate the modern World Series.

In the April of 1945, exactly two years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, liberal Boston City Councilman Izzy Muchnick persuaded the Red Sox to try out three black players in return for a favorable vote to allow the team to play on Sundays. The Red Sox got the councilman's much-needed vote, but the tryout was a sham; the three players would get no closer to the major leagues. It was a lost battle in a war that was ultimately won by Robinson in 1947. This book tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from communist newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that black newspapers espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes of blacks throughout the country. It also reminds us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual. And then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew.

As part of every Reds game broadcast on the Reds Radio Network, Greg Rhodes, noted baseball historian and director of the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, presents a brief, colorful account of a memorable moment in the history of America's longest-running baseball team. These pieces have become a favorite feature for Reds fans, who love to celebrate the Big Red Machine's long and storied history and traditions. This collection brings together every single one of Rhodes' pieces in a single book for both Reds fans and baseball aficionados. Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Highlights chronicles more than 130 years of history and five world series championships and includes over 300 short accounts of the team's greatest, saddest, wildest, and weirdest players and moments. Packed with over 100 photos furnished by the Reds and their museum, the book pays tribute to a team that remains one of America's favorites.

Described by Richard William of The Guardian as 'the best sports book of 2013, and the best sports book of all time', The Boys of Summer is the story of the young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the Brooklyn Dodgers team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for The Herald Tribune. A story about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when the glory days were behind them, it is also a book about fathers and sons and the making of modern America.

In October 1969, the New York Mets stunned the sports world by defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in a memorable World Series. Their five-game triumph capped off a true Cinderella season, when the woebegone National League franchise rose from laughingstock to popular champions. The histories of both the Mets and Orioles are traced, along with their paths to the climactic '69 Series. A batter-by-batter recap of all five games gives a box seat view to a storied moment in baseball history.

After seven games and 13 days, the outcome of the 1962 World Series hung on the final pitch, thrown by a pitcher for the New York Yankees to a hitter for the San Francisco Giants. The teams had been evenly matched, alternating victories until the final, winner-take-all contest. One more out would give the Yankees the championship. A hit would almost certainly win the Giants their first Series title since moving to San Francisco. Despite its breathtaking climax, the '62 Series has seldom been chronicled among the most dramatic Fall Classics. This book provides an unprecedented in-depth examination, describing in detail each game of the Series and the events that led up to it, including the Giants' thrilling playoff with the Dodgers for the National League pennant. The author compares common game strategies used in the early 1960s vs. today and explores possible factors that made this Series historically underrated in the annals of baseball.

What are women softball players looking for in a coach? Drawing on interviews with 50 college players and a survey of players from all NCAA divisions, this book explores what players want and need: someone who connects with them on and off the field, a competent leader who knows and loves the game and mentors them with a vision beyond softball. Coaches from major Division One conferences, as well as Divisions Two and Three and Junior College ranks weigh in, sharing their experiences and coaching strategies - among them four-time Olympian Laura Berg, Baylor University Coach Glenn Moore, University of South Carolina Coach Bev Smith, and four coaches with national championships to their credit. Taking cues from the coaches and players themselves, softball coaches will have the tools they need to revolutionise their approaches.

Dick Stuart (1932-2002) began as a minor league first baseman, noted for his outsized ego and terrible fielding. His brash personality and 66 home runs for the Lincoln Chiefs of the Western League made him a national figure in 1956. In 1958, he came up to the majors in Pittsburgh and played some fine seasons with the Pirates, and later the Boston Red Sox. In 1961, he was selected for the National League All-Star team, and he led the American League in RBI in 1963. A wise-cracking bon vivant, his career was not what it might have been. If he had worked harder, he might have been a better player. If Bill Mazeroski hadn't ended the 1960 Series with a home run, Stuart, who was on deck, might have been the hero. Yet his great hitting ability, quick wit and love for the limelight made him one of the most interesting players of his era.

Night games transformed the business of professional baseball, as the smaller, demographically narrower audiences able to attend daytime games gave way to larger, more diversified crowds of nighttime spectators. Many ball club owners were initially conflicted about artificial lighting and later resisted expanding the number of night games during the sport's existential struggle to balance ballpark attendance and television viewership in the 1950s. This first-ever comprehensive history of night baseball examines the factors, obstacles and trends that shaped this dramatic change in both the minor and major leagues between 1930 and 1990.

The greatest players in baseball history are honored in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Fans and sports journalists often lament about players who might have joined the immortal ranks, if only fate--circumstances, injury or even death--hadn't intervened. Presenting a "who's who of what-ifs," this book focuses on 40 well known non-inductees, such as Tony Conigliaro, Denny McLain and Jose Fernandez, along with many others all but lost to history, such as Ross Barnes, Charlie Ferguson and Hal Trosky. Also included are more than 100 "honorable mentions" covering all of pro baseball history, from the 1860s to the 2010s.

Nebraska is not usually thought of as a focal point in the history of black baseball yet the state has seen its share of contributions to the African American baseball experience. This book focuses on nine of the most significant, including the rise and fall of the Lincoln Giants, Satchel Paige's adventures in the Cornhusker State, a visit from Jackie Robinson, and the maturation of Bob Gibson both on and off the field. Recollections are featured from individuals who participated in or witnessed the African American baseball experience in the Omaha area.

Walter "Smokey" Alston is best known for his long and successful tenure as manager of the Dodgers-first in Brooklyn, then in Los Angeles. Yet few fans are aware of his years in the minors, where he honed the skills that would make him famous. Raised in rural Ohio, Alston graduated from Miami University, where he was noticed by scouts for the St. Louis Cardinals. Signed in 1935, he played on minor league teams in the Cardinals' system. He went to bat in the majors just once-and struck out. But Cardinals President Branch Rickey recognized other talents in Alston and made him a player-manager for several clubs. He steadily produced winning teams and in 1946 led the racially integrated Nashua "Little" Dodgers to a championship. In 1953, he was tapped to run the big club and over the next 23 seasons led the Dodgers to nine pennants and four World Series wins. This book traces Alston's rise through the minor and major leagues to become a Hall of Famer with more than 2000 career wins.