After many disappointing seasons during the 1930s, the 1938 Pittsburgh Pirates looked like they were finally poised to claim their first National League pennant since 1927. A hot streak during June and July propelled manager Pie Traynor's squad into first place. After holding down the top spot for more than two months, Pittsburgh could not hold off the charging Chicago Cubs and experienced one of the most monumental collapses in baseball history. This detailed historical account examines the entire 1938 season, while also looking at the players and events that were a major part of this star-crossed season.

This is an oral history of the Latin American Baseball Leagues of the mid-20th century. Interviews with dozens of former major league players, who participated in the winter leagues of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, provide a fascinating view of life in all of these countries during baseball's most nostalgic era. For the majority of the players, it was the first time in their lives living in a foreign country; some of the more fortunate made trips to the Caribbean Series. The players' recollections range from their experiences on and off the field, to where they lived, what they ate, the ballparks, other players and irrepressible fans. The stories are often juxtaposed against the backdrop of Latin American political history, adding to the unique international flavor.

What were the business aspects of professional baseball during World War II? The sport, like many nonessential industries, struggled to find its place in society during a time of war. The men who ran the game faced government interference and manpower shortages that threatened to shut down their businesses for the duration, and they had to balance the need to show a patriotic front to the public while at the same time protecting their investments. Archival and primary sources provide insight into the perceptions of the major league owners and an understanding of how most of them were able to keep their businesses profitable while the nation fought an enormous two-front war.

Spring training is a time of renewal for baseball, when teams and fans descend on Florida and Arizona to begin the ever hopeful new season. The pace is a little slower, the fans are closer to the action, and the players are more accessible: the sport returns to its idyllic roots. When the first edition of this book was released, 18 of the MLB teams trained in Florida and 12 in Arizona. As 2013 arrives each league consists of 15 teams; together they utilise 14 parks in Florida and 10 in Arizona. This heavily illustrated work dedicates a chapter to each park, including modern Cactus League marvels like Camelback Ranch and Salt River Fields, and Grapefruit League bastions like Joker Marchant Stadium and McKechnie Field. Florida's Fenway Park replica, which opened in 2012, is included. In addition to profiling the five parks that have opened since the first edition, the author has updated the other chapters. Each provides a description of the park, and a recounting of its history, followed by a summary of the home team or teams' spring history. Next is a review of the park's seating, concessions and fan traditions. Each chapter concludes with information about nearby baseball landmarks and attractions.

The 1957 PCL season faced uncertainty about the pending ""invasion of major league baseball"" in 1958. While the meetings, wheeling and dealing and politics took place off the diamond, the historic San Francisco Seals, a charter member of the Golden Era of the league, 1903-1957, played baseball and clinched the pennant two days before the season ended. We follow this team one game at a time as players faced historic rivals from spring training through the final game of the era. Readers experience minor league baseball as it was over fifty years ago when there were no agents, next year's contract was based on this year's performance, and PCL teams consisted of a blend of major league veterans and minor leaguers on the cusp. The Pacific Coast League was no ordinary league, the Seals were no ordinary team, and 1957 was no ordinary season.

This is the biography of Bud Fowler (ne John Jackson), the first African American to play in organised baseball, and the longest tenured at the time that the colour line was drawn. In addition to his professional playing career, which lasted more than 25 years, Fowler was a scout, organiser, owner, and promoter of touring black baseball clubs - including the legendary Page Fence Giants - in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emphasising the social and cultural contexts for Fowler's accomplishments on and off the baseball diamond, and his prominence within the history and development of the national pastime, author Jeff Laing builds a convincing case for Fowler as one of the great pioneering figures of the early game.

The fifty-eight year Easter Monday baseball rivalry between North Carolina State University and Wake Forest University had a the traditional fraternity celebration known as the PIKA Ball, held on the NC State campus, that followed it on Monday evening. Told from the view point of sports journalists, players, fans, and PIKA members, the narrative reveals the excitement and developing strategies as the contest traverses several baseball eras. At the height of its popularity, the game drew astonishingly large crowds of spectators, many of whom were absentee government workers, providing the impetus for the North Carolina State Legislature to declare Easter Monday to be a state holiday.

George Altman grew up in the segregated South but through a mix of timing and opportunity was able to participate in the sport at more levels of competition than perhaps anyone else who has ever played the game, starting in the 1940s and concluding in the 1970s. Not only did Altman play baseball at all of the usual kids' levels, he played college baseball at Tennessee State University, played for the Kansas City Monarchs during the waning days of the Negro Leagues, played for the US Army in service competition, played winter league ball in Cuba and Panama, spent nine years in the majors with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets as a two-time All-Star outfielder, and then culminated his remarkable career by playing in Japan where he was a regular All-Star. For Altman, it was a case of ""Have bat, will travel."" When it comes to baseball, Altman has seen it all and he offers illuminating observations about teams, fans and the game as he journeyed around the world to play it.

Burleigh Grimes--forever remembered as the ill-tempered spitballer with the perpetual five o'clock shadow. For nearly two decades, he brought his surly disposition to the pitcher's mound. His life-or-death mentality resulted in a reputation as one of the game's great competitors and a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Along the way he suited up for eight different ball clubs and played alongside a record 36 Hall of Famers. In all, Grimes spent over half a century in professional baseball as a player, manager, coach and scout. This biography covers all aspects of his life. From his early childhood in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, to his twilight years in that same town. In between are World Series highs and lows, brawls, five marriages, a near-death experience and 270 major league victories.

Billy Southworth was the most successful major league baseball manager of the 1940s including the three straight years in which his St. Louis Cardinal teams won more than 100 games. He won three National League pennants with the Cardinals and one with the Boston Braves, and his .597 winning percentage is the fifth highest in baseball history. But Southworth was dogged by demons off the field, including the deaths of three children. On the field, his achievements were minimised by many because they occurred during the war years when the baseball talent level was below par. When he finally got top recognition, being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2007, the honour occurred 38 years after his death.

Before they acquired Babe Ruth or won a single championship, the New York Yankees (nee Highlanders) were a team that inspired the strongest of feelings in baseball circles. Stars such as Jack Chesbro, Hal Chase, and Brooklyner Willie Keeler drew loud followings, and the team made loyal fans of those who disliked the cross-town Giants or Dodgers. Even Ban Johnson prized the franchise, which gave his upstart American League a foothold in the nation's most populous city. Baltimoreans, on the other hand, nurtured an animus toward the team, which only a few years earlier had been called the Orioles. And former Orioles manager John McGraw hatched a plan, along with Giants owner Andrew Freedman, to sabotage the new club. This heavily illustrated volume combines a fully documented history of the deadball-era Yankees with 195 photos of the people, places, and events that figured prominently in the story.

The book follows the colorful career of Frank Lane, who as baseball's busiest general manager during the 1950s made the deals that turned the Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians from losers into pennant contenders almost overnight. He also worked--or tried to--as general manager of the Kansas City A's (Lane lasted eight months in 1961 under first-year owner Charlie Finley) and for the Milwaukee Brewers, where his boss was Bud Selig. He is best known for having traded 1959 American League home run champion Rocky Colavito to Detroit for the AL's 1959 batting champ, Harvey Kuenn, and for trading Indians manager Joe Gordon to Detroit for Tigers manager Jimmy Dykes. During his brief absence from baseball (1962-1964), he signed on as general manager of the National Basketball Association's second-year expansion team, the Chicago Zephyrs. He became a ""superscout"" for the Baltimore Orioles for several years and, after leaving Milwaukee, had the same job with the Texas Rangers and, finally, the California Angels. He completed well over 500 major- and minor-league transactions in his career. Joe Garagiola put it best: ""They used to say that the toughest job on any club Frank Lane was running belonged to the team photographer.

On the average major league roster, Hispanic or Latin-born players today account for at least 25 percent of the team. In 1900 there were none; in 1911 the number had crept to two; and after World War II when American GI's returned to the playing fields, there was, for a brief time, only one Latino in the major leagues. From 1900 through the 1940s early Latino players suffered discrimination, poor accommodations, low pay and homesickness to play a game they loved. Those who were both talented and light-skinned enough to make it to the majors were mocked for their foreign-ness. Those in the Negro Leagues were, like African American ballplayers, segregated and largely ignored by the public and major league scouts. Building on what we know about the careers of these pioneer players, Nick Wilson draws on primary documents and interviews to round out our knowledge of them as people. Organised by decade, this book presents new information on the players who came before baseball's great Latin explosion. Profiled here are Rafael Almeida, Jose Mendez, Miguel Gonzalez, Luis Tiant, Sr., Martin Dihigo, Armando Marsans, Rodolfo Fernandez, Roberto Ortiz, Adolfo Luque, Cristobal Torriente, Hiram Bithorn and Pedro ""Preston"" Gomez, and many others. An appendix on Americans who influenced the Latin migration is also included.

This is the story of one of the most dramatic baseball seasons ever, as it stretched both backwards and forwards--from the ghosts of seasons and players past to the reality of what followed. At the beginning of 1986, most of the baseball talk was about money; at the end it was about one of the most dramatic seasons ever, a season that played out like a compelling drama driven by a cast of memorable characters--Bonds, Canseco, Puckett, Ryan, Rose, Boyd, Gooden, Strawberry, Clemens, Hernandez, Boggs, and more. On an institutional level the game was facing critical issues--player contracts, collusion, drugs, free agency, charges of racism, cheating, gambling, the growing popularity of professional football, and the influence of cable TV and satellites. Yet it produced a season of intense drama ending with an unforgettable post-season.

This is a comprehensive history of League Park, primary home field for Major League Baseball in Cleveland from 1891 to 1946. The site boasts significant history beyond the majors, including the National Football League, Negro League baseball, college football and boxing, and has experienced an uncanny multitude of amazing events and people, although that history has heretofore gone largely unrecognized. This chronicle allows for these grounds to take their place among the more heralded parks of baseball's past and present. Perhaps the most unique feature of the site is that is has survived to this day as a baseball grounds, with renovations of the site scheduled to begin in the spring of 2012.

This book concerns the Pennsylvania state leagues of the 1880s and 1890s, some of the most interesting minor leagues in the history of baseball. The rules were changing, the world around baseball, particularly the economy, was changing and things that would seem impossible today, or from 1903 to the 1950s, were happening every year. These leagues had not only black players but also wholly black teams. They had great major leaguers--on their way up but also on the way back down. In fact, the greatest player of the age, surrounded by what would have been a major league all-star team only a few years before, played in a Pennsylvania minor league for almost a full season. The play was exciting, the players were exciting and the owners, managers and league politics were often more interesting than the games.

In the years following the decline of the New York Yankees dynasty that ended in 1964, three American League teams endeavored to stake their claim to the Junior Circuit's crown. From 1965 to 1975, the Minnesota Twins, Baltimore Orioles, and Oakland Athletics emerged as the most significant AL clubs, but this trio achieved varying degrees of success. Through the prism of these three teams, this book will examine facets of the dynastic aspirations of each during this time: the way in which key personnel were assembled into a cohesive roster, the glory that was won by the clubs, and the factors leading to their decline. Drawing on a rich variety of primary and secondary sources, the story is told of vital players from Latin America who made their way to Minnesota, the select few who ventured from the Orioles' training facility in Thomasville, Georgia, to Baltimore, and the collegiate stars selected in the early years of the newly-created amateur draft who went on to help forge a dynasty in Oakland.

During the mid-1950s, an unlikely star stood alongside baseball standouts Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron and Willie Mays--a slugger with a funny name and muscles so bulging that he had to cut the sleeves off his uniform to swing freely. Ted Kluszewski played little baseball in his youth, making a name for himself instead as a hard-hitting football player at Indiana University before showing potential on the diamond and being signed by the Cincinnati Reds. Between 1953 and 1956, no other player in major league baseball hit more home runs than Kluszewski. If not for a back injury, he may have gone down in major league history as one its greatest players. With detailed statistics from both his football and baseball careers, this biography chronicles the unusual odyssey that took Kluszewski to the big leagues and ultimately made him an icon during the 1950s.

This book analyzes how sportswriters discuss issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual identity, age, and class within professional baseball from 1998 to the present. Each chapter looks at the media representations of a specific controversy including the 1998 home-run chase, Alex Rodriguez's historic contract singing, Barry Bond's home-run chases, Mike Piazza's ""I am not gay"" press conference, Effa Manley's Hall of Fame induction, the celebration of Jackie Robinson Day, as well as the various incidents involving performance-enhancing drugs. The author puts it together and reveals what messages are being conveyed by the issues.

In 1939, baseball's past ran headlong into its future. As the game celebrated its 100th anniversary with the opening of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, it learned that the legend of the sport's origins was purely a myth. On the field, the veteran players who had saved the game after the Black Sox scandal were slowly giving way to a new wave of players, men who would usher in the Golden Age of the game. Through extensive research, augmented by interviews with such Hall of Famers as Bob Feller, Ernie Harwell, Charlie Gehringer and Monte Irvin, the game's pivotal season is retold here. The appendix provides a statistical summary of the year.

This is the first full-length biography of Kid Nichols (1869-1953), who won 30 or more games a record seven times and was the youngest pitcher to reach 300 career victories. Much new light is shed on Nichols' early life in Madison, Wisconsin, along with important influences and experiences as a teenager living in Kansas City. His professional career is documented by drawing heavily from publications of the era and Nichols' own words. The high regard in which he was held by fans, teammates and even opponents is contrasted with his contentious relationship with team owners. Nichols' period of restlessness, ambition, and risk-taking following his long stint with Boston's National League team is detailed, as is the campaign to get him into the Hall of Fame. The book includes previously unpublished photos from his descendants' archives, many more than a century old.

This book is about the successful operation of a sports franchise. While there are many sports-related books about what happens on the playing field, there are few written about the equally interesting but seldom told stories of what happens on the business side. Why does someone acquire a professional sports team? What goes into the branding, marketing and entertainment that make some teams successful, and others not? What are the key challenges that managers, athletic directors and other sports staff face? Are there valuable lessons from the major and minor leagues for university, high school and other amateur sports programs? Do sports teams generate a profit? And if so, how? While the examples are drawn from the business of minor league baseball, the lessons are equally applicable to all other sports, and even to many retail businesses.

This is a biographical dictionary of the 325 men who played in the National Association between 1871 and 1875, with their playing record, together with what we know of their other baseball experience and their lives beyond baseball. The book also contains a dictionary of the 25 clubs who participated in the league, showing their history, their management, their uniforms and logos, their home grounds, and their performance in the league. About 150 player photographs are included and each club entry has two or three supporting images (18 are historical maps).

One of early baseball's most popular celebrities, Arlie Latham played for the St. Louis Browns in the 1880s. A brainy hitter and base-runner, he was also the sport's brashest, funniest player, his ""fresh"" personality bringing him as much trouble as reward. He played with the 19th century's greatest names, and was friends with everyone from King Kelly to King George V. He parlayed his stardom into a vaudeville career and the first official major league coaching job. In his fifties he carried the game he loved into world war to cheer Allied troops and in his seventies went to work for the Yankees. Arlie Latham's baseball odyssey is made more compelling by the parade of players, gamblers, boxers, actors, women and mascots that passes through it, providing a unique glimpse into America's game and the people who loved it.