This is the story of the Troy Haymakers, a pioneer baseball team legendary for their exploits on and off the field. Formed in 1860 in Troy, New York - an industrial city experiencing rapid growth - the team was embraced by the tough-minded Trojans as emblematic of their vigorous boomtown, which rivaled larger, better-established communities. The Haymakers were a strong amateur club before becoming a charter member of baseball's first major league, the National Association, and subsequently being awarded a franchise in the National League. Reflecting the working-class nature of the city, team rosters were filled with characters and scalawags along with talented players, including four future Hall of Famers. After losing its National League franchise in 1882, Troy fielded minor league teams for 34 years - with a wistful eye to Haymaker history.

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2013-2014 is an anthology of seventeen scholarly essays that utilize the national game to examine topics whose import extends beyond the ballpark. The anthology is divided into six parts. Baseball Poetry, Music, and Literature considers the congruence of culture and baseball. The Ballpark: Place and Atmosphere examines the importance of venue distinctiveness. Myths, Legends, and Icons of the Game provides perspectives on protagonists of the baseball imagination. Asian and Asian-American Baseball explores international and ethnic variations on the game. Museums: Baseball Exhibits, Standards, and Preservation analyses the craft and goals of baseball curators. Contracts, Jurisprudence, and the Pastime contextualizes the games' rules of play and labour. Each of the six parts contains essays related by theme and topic. Baseball, Casey, and Me by Frank Deford, Senior Contributing Writer for Sports Illustrated, for example, discusses the challenges and opportunities presented when writing about baseball's signature poem, Casey at the Bat.Back to the Future: Building a Ballpark, Not a Stadium by Janet Marie Smith, the Los Angeles Dodgers' Senior Vice President for Planning and Development, discusses her role in the construction of Orioles Park at Camden Yards and the renovation of Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium, Turner Field, and other iconic venues. A Strategic Approach for Baseball to Flourish in Modern China by Keith Spalding Robbins, who served as Vice President, Director of Design, and Lead Design Principal of a Chinese-owned planning and design studio headquartered in Shanghai, offers analysis and policy proposals for establishing a Chinese Major League.

After many years of being an also-ran in the National league, the Pittsburgh Pirates' fortunes changed dramatically following the 1899 season after a monumental deal with the Louisville Colonels. The addition of star players such as Fred Clarke, Honus Wagner, Tommy Leach and Deacon Phillippe allowed Pittsburgh to become the first baseball dynasty of the twentieth century as they won National League pennants in 1901, 1902 and 1903. Without question, the 1902 Pirates aggregation was the greatest of those three squads. This definitive historical account examines the record-breaking 1902 Pittsburgh season, the politics that shaped baseball's landscape during that time period and the players who were responsible for allowing that squad to claim its rightful place in baseball history.

The Negro Southern League was a baseball minor league that operated off and on from 1920 to 1951. It served as a valuable feeder system to the Negro National League and the Negro American League. A number of NNL and NAL stars got their start in the NSL, among them five Hall of Famers including Satchel Paige and Willie Mays. During its history, more than 80 teams were members of the league, representing 40 cities in a dozen states. In the end only four teams remained, operating more as semipro than professional teams. This book is a narrative history of the league from its inception with eight teams in major Southern cities until its demise three decades later.

On a sunny Fourth of July during World War I, King George V went out to a ball game. Along with Queen Mary and other royalty, Winston Churchill, dozens of VIPs, thousands of troops and ordinary Londoners, the monarch cheered an extraordinary “baseball match� between American soldiers and sailors. This historic event helped solidify the transatlantic alliance that was vital to winning the war. The game itself was a thriller, reported throughout the English-speaking world. The players ranged from kids fresh off the sandlots to a handful of major and minor leaguers and a future Hall of Famer. The two veteran pitchers went the distance, the outcome in doubt until the last batter. Drawing on American and British sources and game-day coverage, this first-ever full account of the “King's game� records every play and explores the lives of several players. The author provides a brief history of the Anglo-American Baseball League and armed forces baseball played in England, France and the United States during the Great War.

Honus Wagner's spectacular baseball career spanned 21 seasons from 1897 through 1917. Widely considered the greatest shortstop in baseball history, Wagner won eight National League batting titles and helped win the pennant four times for his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates. This book assembles the many stories about Wagner that circulated among his teammates, opposing players, writers and fans - reminiscences that define both his career and his life as a citizen in the Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie.

When the members of the first baseball players' union formed their own league in open revolt against the reserve clause and other restrictive practices of the National League, baseball journalism moved out of the curiosity shop of mainstream journalism and into the newsroom. Baseball journalists Henry Chadwick, T.H. Murnane and Ella Black covered the labor struggle on the field and in the front offices - and they took sides: one as a mouthpiece for the capitalist owners of the National League, one as a omer for the cooperatively operated Players' League, and the other more or less in the middle. The roots of baseball writing as we know it today are visible in their coverage that season. Through a close examination of their work, this book tells the stories of the three sportswriters and the development of sports journalism in response to the famed "Brotherhood War" of 1890.

Ernie, Gabby, Billy, Fergie, Cap and Hack, Rhino and Santo, Andre and Sammy, Wrigley, the ivy. Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, tossing back opposing team's homers, the Billy Goat Curse, Bartman's ball. Sixteen National League pennants, two World Series crowns, but...95 years and counting. Cubs Pride spans 129 years of Chicago Cubs ups, downs, and almosts. Extolled are the great legends, the lustrous lore, and the fabled futility of the Windy City's favorite nine. It's certain to work up a case of diamond fever for Cubs fans and baseball enthusiasts everywhere. In 2003 the Cubs were just five outs away from their first World Series appearance since 1945, but the mysterious forces of fate intervened once again, and a late-game eight-run-rally by the Florida Marlins ended the dream. Such mishaps have made the Cubs America's "favorite losers," according to Chicago TV station WGN, owned by the same company that owns the Cubs. The team's perennial failings and underdog status have created a national following. Cubs Pride provides firsthand accounts of the great Cubs players; the intense rivalries; the testaments to Cubs character; the great moments in Cub history; all 16 National League pennant-winning rosters; the all-time Cubs team; and even a shrine to No. 14, the immortal Ernie Banks. All are told by the players themselves, managers and coaches, Cubs' opponents, and members of the media.

The story of the 1914 “Miracle� Boston Braves is one of the most memorable in baseball history, but less well known is what the club did after that spectacular season. They didn't “flash and disappear�, as sports writer John Kieran put it. In 1915, they were strong contenders for the National League pennant, and almost won it again in 1916. This book is the first to look at the “Miracle� Braves in a larger context. Under the innovative manager George Stallings, the Braves won Boston's first National League pennant in 17 years. Their startling sweep of the mighty Philadelphia Athletics was their league's only World Series victory from 1909 to 1919. The Braves of those years - like the hot-tempered Georgian who managed them - were a roistering, pugnacious crew that battled the opposition, the umpires and sometimes each other.

The Cup of Coffee Club shares the stories of eleven men who played in just a single major league baseball game and how they responded to the heartache of never making it back. Featuring exclusive interviews with each of the players, their insight provides a unique look into the struggles of being a professional ballplayer. Reaching the major leagues is a pipe dream for most young baseball players in America. Very few ever get to live it out. While many that do make it to the big leagues stay there for a long time, there are just as many that are only there for a brief moment. A select few of those players face the elation and frustration of getting to play in just one major league game. The Cup of Coffee Club: 11 Players and Their Brush with Baseball History tells the stories of eleven of these players and their struggles to reach the major leagues, as well as their struggles to get back. They include a former Major League Baseball manager, the son of a Baseball Hall of Famer, and two different brothers of Hall of Famers. Exclusive interviews with each of the players provide insight into what that single seminal moment meant and how they dealt with the blow of never making another major league appearance again. Spanning half a century of baseball, each player’s journey to Major League Baseball is distinct, as is each of their responses to having played in just a single game. The Cup of Coffee Club shares their unique perspectives, providing a better understanding of just how special each major league game can be.

The study of baseball history and culture reveals the national game as a contested field where debates about sport, character, work and play, the country and the city, labor, race, and a host of other issues, circulate. Understanding baseball, then, calls for careful consideration of several different perspectives and what each contributes to the conversation. Intended as a readable textbook for undergraduates (and perhaps advanced high school students) and their instructors, Understanding Baseball is designed to offer insights and inroads into baseball history as a rewarding academic subject worthy of careful scholarly attention. Each chapter introduces a specific disciplinary approach to baseball - in this edition, history, economics, media, law, and fiction - and covers representative questions scholars from that academic field might consider.

This is the previously untold story of the London Tecumsehs, an 1870s baseball team that rose to the top ranks of pro ball. The Tecumsehs of London, Ontario, were among the founding members of the International Association in 1877, the first league established to challenge the struggling National League, formed a year earlier. The team played against the top competition of the day and defeated nines from Chicago, St. Louis and elsewhere. They became the first champions of the International Association when they defeated Pittsburgh with the help of Fred Goldsmith, one of the first curveball pitchers. This is also the story of the International Association, the only one of the six leagues challenging the primacy of the National League that has never been accorded major league status. To this day it has been relegated to minor league status to the detriment of some of the pioneer players in the game.

The Boyer Brothers of Baseball is the story of the seven baseball-playing brothers from Western Missouri who in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s signed professional contracts. Led by oldest brother Cloyd, a pitcher, third baseman Ken Boyer, and third baseman Clete Boyer, three of the seven siblings in a family of 14, including the girls, reached the majors. This is the story of their hardscrabble upbringing and how they fought their way to success. Initially discouraged by arm injuries that curtailed his big-league career, Cloyd became a coach and manager at the minor-league and Major League levels and remained in the game for nearly a half century. The most accomplished of the brothers, Ken, became a perennial National League All-Star and won the 1964 Most Valuable Player award. For a period of time in the 1960s, Ken Boyer was the face of the St. Louis Cardinals and after his playing days ended he returned to manage the team. Clete Boyer gained prominence as a regular for the perennial American League-champion New York Yankees and competed in five World Series before starring in the National League and concluding his career in Japan. While they did not make it to the top, the four other brothers enrich the story with their own baseball histories and help illustrate how the closeness of the family helped everyone succeed.

Baseball has had many outstanding Latin American pitchers since the early 20th century. This book profiles the greatest Hispanic hurlers to toe the rubber from the mounds of the major leagues, winter leagues and Negro leagues. The careers of the top major league pitchers to come from Central and South America and the Caribbean are examined in decade-by-decade portrayals, culminating with an all-time ranking by the author. The grand exploits of these athletes backdrop the evolving pitching eras of the game, from the macho, complete-game period that existed for the majority of the last century to the financially-driven, pitch-count sensitive culture that dominates baseball thinking today.

The Giants' accomplishments took place against an historical backdrop of a change in the African-American experience. The original players from Jacksonville, Florida, joined the northward black migration during World War I. The team was named after Harry Bacharach - an Atlantic City politician running for mayor - as a way to keep his name before the city's black community. The Giants were immediately successful, and soon played the best semi-professional teams in their region, as well as the top black teams from the East and Midwest. They entered the first Negro league on the East Coast in 1923, and won the league championship twice before the decade ended. This book chronicles the Giants' pivotal role in the development of black baseball in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, and the careers of the men who made it possible.

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 twentieth-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, until now, 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 nineteenth-century America, with their unruly players and owners, affray and adulation and backroom betrayals. Through 17 seasons in the major leagues, ""Undertaker"" Joe Quinn earned his place amongst the colourful characters who pioneered the modern game of baseball, as much for his ability to stand apart from their bad behaviour as for his steadfastness on the field. Meet Australia's first professional baseball player and manager, a man born to Irish refugees in an outback squatter's camp and 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.

Pedro Martinez. Sammy Sosa. Manny Ramirez. By 2000, Dominican baseball players were in every Major League clubhouse, and regularly winning every baseball award. In 2002, Omar Minaya became the first Dominican general manager of a Major League team. But how did this codependent relationship between MLB and Dominican talent arise and thrive? In his incisive and engaging book, Dominican Baseball, Alan Klein examines the history of MLB's presence and influence in the Dominican Republic, the development of the booming industry and academies, and the dependence on Dominican player developers, known as buscones. He also addresses issues of identity fraud and the use of performance-enhancing drugs as hopefuls seek to play professionally. Dominican Baseball charts the trajectory of the economic flows of this transnational exchange, and the pride Dominicans feel in their growing influence in the sport. Klein also uncovers the prejudice that prompts MLB to diminish Dominican claims on legitimacy. This sharp, smartly argued book deftly chronicles the uneasy and often contested relations of the contemporary Dominican game and industry.

Basing his claims on more than 130 in-depth interviews with baseball fans from ages 10 to 80, the author arrives at some extraordinary conclusions about the prismatic richness of the fan's experience of baseball and its importance in his or her life. The responses, 40 of which are reproduced in this oral history, suggest three major hypotheses: that how the youthful fan regards the game is a resonant expression of his personality, his family and social situation, and his fundamental needs; that baseball, far more than a pastime or idle entertainment, serves a number of extremely important emotional and developmental functions - moral, social, aesthetic and psychological - in the lives of its younger fans; and that one of baseball's less frequently heralded virtues is its extraordinary richness, its capacity to turn a different face to almost every fan and to satisfy that remarkably wide range of personalities, backgrounds and needs. What these interviews suggest and what the author's introductory sections argue is that to its most ardent young fans, baseball is not only a source of great and lasting pleasure, but an important socialising agent and a vital expression and determinant of character.

This account of the four baseball seasons of 1900 through 1903 seeks to capture the flavour of the period by providing yearly overviews from the standpoint of each team and by focusing more deeply on 30 or more players of the era - not only such legendary stars as Cy Young and Willie Keeler, but also relative unknowns such as Bill Keister and Kip Selbach. Each team section is supplemented by a table providing the significant batting and pitching statistics for each regular team member. The major theme of the period was the baseball war between the National and American leagues from 1900 to 1903. But the broad multiseason, multiteam view allows varying the focus. The pennant races receive due attention but there are other aspects of the baseball drama, such as: the aging star who finds a way to extend his period of dominance (Cy Young); the young, unpolished phenom whose raw talent enables him to excel (Christy Mathewson); and the fierce competitor who risks injury to help his team (Joe McGinnity and Deacon Phillippe).

Most baseball fans identify Tom Candiotti first and foremost as a knuckleball pitcher. He actually began his career as a conventional pitcher in 1983 after becoming just the second player to appear in the major leagues following Tommy John surgery, at a time when only Tommy John himself had ever come back from the operation. Candiotti, whose arm recovered following the surgery, threw fastballs and curveballs in his first two years in the majors before switching over to the knuckleball prior to the 1986 season. Though he would then go on to use the knuckleball primarily throughout the rest of his career, he also threw a good enough curveball to get hitters out. This biography is based on the recollections of Candiotti himself, his former teammates and managers, newspaper and periodical accounts, and archival resources.

This is the first book-length biography of Ed McKean, one of the nineteenth-century's premier shortstops. It is also the story of the so-called Emerald Age of baseball and leading Irish figures including Patsy Tebeau, Jimmy McAleer, John MGraw, and Hughie Jennings.

This book chronicles the history of the Philadelphia Athletics, the first real dynasty in Major League Baseball. The focus of the book is the 1931 season, where Philadelphia, led by is superstar pitcher, Lefty Grove, had the best season in franchise history, leading to a third consecutive trip to the World Series. With a roster full of future Hall of Fame players like Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, Connie Mack, and Lefty Grove, the Athletics were one of the best baseball teams of all time, and the 1931 season served as the apex of their success, as the financial restrictions of the Great Depression caused team ownership to break up the team.

Go to the Head of the Class with a Baseball Legend Baseball legend Casey Stengel is considered by many to be the greatest manager in baseball history. He was certainly one of the most successful. He managed the fabled New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 and compiled ten American League pennants and seven world championships during that time. He was also without question one of the game's all-time characters, best known for conversing in a mangled form of English that came to be known as Stengelese."" Beyond the comedy and the world championships, however, his baseball life spanned the ages, from the dead-ball era to Astro Turf. He began his big league career by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912 and ended it by managing the hapless New York Mets in 1965. Between the first and last stop, Stengel was a World Series hero; a failed manager with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves; a washed-up, aging manager in the minors; and the wacky interloper who took over the stuffy, staid Yankees in 1949 and reformed them into a dynasty. In Casey Stengel: Baseball's ""Old Perfessor, "" dozens of former players, friends, and associates recall the Stengel myth and the Stengel reality. They explore his managing style with great teams and with horrible teams; his pioneering, controversial techniques; his humor, his edginess, and his weaknesses; why some players hated him while others loved him; why some think he was a genius and others think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. What emerges is a fascinating ride through baseball history and a thoughtful look at the life of a man who was counted out, mocked, and underestimated--and yet he never gave up, finally findingsuccess in his later years.""

For more than a century Johnny Evers has been conjoined with Chicago Cubs teammates Frank Chance and Joe Tinker, thanks to eight lines of verse penned by a well-known New York columnist. He has been caricatured as a scrawny, sour man who couldn't hit and who owed his fame to that poem. In truth Johnny Evers was the heartbeat of one of the greatest teams of the 20th century and the fiercest competitor this side of Ty Cobb. He was at the centre of one of baseball's greatest controversies, a chance event that sealed his stardom and stole a pennant from John McGraw and the New York Giants in 1908. Six years later, following a stunning set of reversals and tragedies that resulted in his suffering a nervous breakdown, he made a comeback with the Boston Braves and led that team to the most improbable of championships. Spanning the time from his birth in Troy, New York, to his death less than a year after his election to the Hall of Fame, this is the biography of a man who literally wrote the book about playing his position and set the standard for winning baseball.