The way to becoming a Major League ballplayer is not an easy one. So many factors are out of a player's control. He must concern himself with the things he can control and the things he can do to improve his play, and thus give himself at least the chance to succeed. The author of this work draws from his personal experiences and his former teammates' experiences to help the average player make the most of the talent he has and to make smart decisions on and off the field. The book covers the fundamentals and finer points of pitching, fielding, hitting, catching, base running, and playing the outfield. It also covers strength training and conditioning, the importance of good grades to high school and college baseball, catching the attention of coaches and scouts, selecting the right college, playing at the college level, dealing with coaches, parental involvement and support, the draft, and the world of professional baseball.

Following the 1919 Black Sox scandal, baseball needed men willing and able to pump life back into the game during tough times. Numerous ballplayers stepped forward and left their mark on the national pastime as it continued to thrive and grow during a decade that became known as the Roaring Twenties, a raucous, happy time period when a free-spirited nature prevailed. In Baseball's Roaring Twenties: A Decade of Legends, Characters, and Diamond Adventures, Ronald T. Waldo recounts the rollicking escapades surrounding a distinctive collection of players, managers, and umpires that truly personified this era of baseball history. Waldo includes a mix of unique stories and amusing tales surrounding baseball greats like Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Rabbit Maranville, and Casey Stengel, alongside less famous diamond performers such as Duster Mails, Jay Kirke, Jimmy O'Connell, and Possum Whitted. The fans-who were every bit as important in helping the game grow during the '20s-are also given their due with a chapter of their own. From the story of Heinie Mueller unceremoniously pushing his attractive cousin out of sight when he saw manager Branch Rickey approaching to the tale of minor league hurler Augie Prudhomme literally following the sarcastic directive from pilot George Stallings to burn his uniform, Baseball's Roaring Twenties provides an entertaining perspective of baseball during this singular decade. Amusing and informative, this book will be of interest to baseball fans and historians of all generations.

Playing baseball on Sunday was a divisive issue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On one side of the argument were the owners, who wanted to take in more money, and working people, who labored six days a week and wanted to take in a baseball game on the seventh. On the other side were people who thought that the commandment to keep Sunday sacred ought to be obeyed. The story of how Sunday baseball went from being an illegal activity in most areas of the country in 1876 to a legal form of entertainment in all major league cities by 1934 is told in this work. It describes the numerous schemes used to play baseball on Sunday, like playing games in strange places, under odd circumstances and at the inconvenience of players and managers, many of whom were arrested and jailed for attempting to play baseball on Sunday. It covers the foothold Sunday baseball gained in cities like St. Louis, Cincinnati and Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s, its slow spread eastward as the general attitude of the populace toward Sunday baseball gradually changed, and its widespread acceptance after New York passed a law in 1919 making it legal. It was not until 1934, however, that Sunday baseball was played in all major league cities.

Growing up, Pat Brown had two dreams: to play baseball and to attend college. She was told she couldn't play baseball because she was a girl and couldn't attend college because she had no money, but in spite of the obstacles, she achieved both of these dreams, playing for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1950 and 1951 and going on to attend college. She is among the few women professional baseball players to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. ""As the only former AAGPBL player to have written about the League,"" Brown says, ""I feel like I have finally pitched my no hit game."" This is a memoir of playing on the sandlot, discovering and playing in the AAGPBL, and playing baseball in college. Brown shares her thoughts on the League's history, including what Philip K. Wrigley sought to do by creating the AAGPBL, what happened after Wrigley left to give more attention to the Chicago Cubs, and why the League ended; and considers the future for women's professional baseball. Brown also presents interviews with former AAGPBL players Helen Hannah Campbell, Patricia ""Pat"" Courtney, Madeline ""Maddy"" English, Lenora ""Smokey"" Mandella, Jacqueline ""Jackie"" Matson, Jane Moffet, Mary ""Sis"" Moore, and Janet ""Pee Wee"" Riley.

The players' strike and owners' lockout in 1994 and 1995 brought the game under great scrutiny, revealing a side of baseball that is not admirable, honorable or enjoyable. Nor is this darker side of ""America's Favorite Pastime"" a recent development. The majority of problems in today's major leagues are a continuation of ills that have plagued organized baseball since its inception. This book examines the business of baseball, addressing its most significant problems and proposing solutions. It covers some of major league baseball's greatest players and their effect on the business. Among the many topics analyzed are the roles of franchise owners, commissioners, and players' unions in organized baseball. The book also examines major league ballparks and baseball fans, and considers how they are relevant to baseball as a game and a business.

The Waner brothers, Paul and Lloyd--also known as "Big Poison" and "Little Poison"--played together for fourteen seasons in the same Pittsburgh outfield in the 1920s and 1930s. More than half a century after retiring, they still rank as the best-hitting brothers in major league history with a combined 5,611 hits--517 more than the three Alou brothers, 758 more than the three DiMaggio brothers, and 1,400 more than the five Delahanty brothers. And both Waners are in the Hall of Fame, the only playing brothers so honored. This work tells the story of the Waner brothers from their early lives in Oklahoma through their playing days. It is also the story of two American eras: the Roaring Twenties and the Depression years. The Waners experienced the excitement of playing in the World Series, but they also encountered the pressures of having to perform in order to keep their jobs, and they struggled to overcome health problems. Both put up impressive numbers individually: Paul amassed 3,152 hits, and his .333 lifetime average ranks among the highest ever in the game. Lloyd, a lifetime .316 hitter, collected 2,459 hits, and had it not been for health problems, he might have cleared the 3,000 hit milestone as well. Together, they were baseball heroes.

This work examines how Philadelphia acquired a reputation as a tough place for African American players. It follows the very slow and difficult progress of integration of the Philadelphia Phillies and Athletics. Attempts to integrate Philadelphia baseball began being made as early as the 1860s, and all of them proved futile until 1953. Those attempts and the reasons they failed are discussed. The book provides biographical and statistical information on some of the African American players who were confronted with discrimination, and also looks at the white players, managers, coaches, and front office personnel who were having a difficult time accepting African American players on their teams.

After Babe Ruth erased Buck Freeman's record in 1919, the new mark stood for 34 years before Maris bettered it, defying as he did an incredulous sporting public. And just as fans' anger grew old and Maris was grudgingly credited--or discredited--with an unrepeatable hot streak, along came Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, two goliaths who in 1998 and the years just after proved fans wrong again. But when in 2001, only three years after McGwire seemed to put the record beyond reach, Barry Bonds topped him by three. This time fans were staunch in their disbelief, and while many celebrated Bonds' achievement, others questioned its significance. This revised edition of Bill McNeil's Ruth, Maris, McGwire, and Sosa (libraries especially will want this--Library Journal) reviews the careers of each home run titan, with special attention to the record-breaking seasons. The cultural and social changes that may have affected both the players' season totals and fan reception are also considered.

Major league baseball has a long, rich history in Brooklyn. From 1883 until their move west to Los Angeles following the 1957 season, the Dodgers were the emotional center of the borough's diverse population. But Brooklyn would be without a professional team until June of 2000 when the Cyclones took the field at Prospect Park, just blocks from Ebbets Field, as part of the New York-Penn League and the Toronto Blue Jays' farm system. This work follows the rookie-level club's first season, bridging the present to the past with comparisons of the Cyclones to the Dodgers of yesteryear. Each day of the season, which ran from mid-June through early September, is covered. Appearing before the profile of each new Brooklyn player is a brief account of the Dodger player who shared his position. Also included are interviews of players and fans of both teams.

This book is a collection of poems devoted to the St. Louis Cardinals. They cover over a hundred years of Cardinal players, significant moments, and other memorable aspects of the team. Branch Rickey, Grover Cleveland Alexander and the 1926 World Series, Rogers Hornsby and Dizzy Dean in the 1920s and '30s, the Cooper brothers, Harry ""The Cat"" Brecheen and Enos Slaughter and the 1946 Series, Stan ""The Man"" Musial and Whitey Ford in the 1940s and '50s, Bill White, Julian Javier, Dick Groat, Mike Shannon, Ken Boyer, Bob Uecker and Roger Maris in the 1960s and '70s, Glenn Brummer, Willie McGee, Joaquin Andujar, John Tudor, Mark McGwire and Fernando Tatis in the 1980s and '90s, and Albert Pujols and Will Clark in the 2000s - all of these players and moments, and many more, are here celebrated in verse.

This is an anthology of papers that were presented at the Tenth Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held in June 1998, and co-sponsored by the State University of New York at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame These essays, divided into sections titled "Baseball as a Business, " "Baseball and Communication, " "Baseball and Racial and Ethnic Perspectives, " "Baseball and Gender Matters, " "Baseball and Images" and "The Other Leagues of Baseball, " cut through the quick and eas judgments of the media and offer instead the longer, more informed view of scholars and researchers.

The 1964 season, highlighted by two significant trades, a game-winning home run, and three no-hitters, was a dramatic one for the National League. But even more thrilling was that seasons final week and the race for the pennant. All the drama of the 1964 National League season through the Cardinals league championship is in this book. It covers Johnny Callisons All-Star game-winning home run, Duke Sniders trade from the New York Mets to the San Francisco Giants and Lou Brocks trade from the Cubs to the Cardinals, Reds manager Fred Hutchinsons battle with cancer (and his replacement, and death in November 1964), the controversial remarks made by Giants manager Alvin Dark about African American and Latin players on his own team, the no-hitters pitched by Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers, Jim Bunning of the Phillies, and Ken Johnson of the Colt .45s (later the Astros), the opening of Shea Stadium, and the demolition of Polo Grounds. Special attention is given to the final weeks of the season when the Phillies collapsed with a six and a half game lead and twelve games to go, while battling it out with the Cardinals and the Reds.

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.

One of the first minor leagues in history, the Western League (previously the Northwestern League) was founded by Ban Johnson in 1885 and was the predecessor of todays American League. The Western League endured a season to season existence until Johnson created the American League and the Western continued to be a part of the minors, employing such future Hall of Famers as Charles Comiskey, Dizzy Dean, and Connie Mack. The leagues demise in the minors came in the 1950s, but it was revived in 1995 as an independent league on the West Coast with no relation to the majors. This work begins with an introduction to the Western League and documents the history of the Western and the American leagues from 1885 through 1999. Included are photographs of teams and players who participated in the league and in-depth team and individual player statistics.

At least as far back as 1842 through about the late 1930s and mid-1940s, before baseball became commercialized and teams were able to hire one man to manage the entire team, it was not uncommon for one person to fill the roles of player and manager simultaneously. Often, the strongest, brightest, or best player - or sometimes the person who owned the playing equipment - directed his teammates. Forty-two of those men who were both players and managers at the same time are profiled in this work. The book leads off with chapters describing what it was like to fill the dual role and how it came about. Then, chapters are devoted to such men as Cap Anson, Connie Mack, Charles Comiskey, John McGraw, Mickey Cochrane, Dave Bancroft, Ty Cobb, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, and Pete Rose, just to name a few.

It is not known exactly when base ball first made its way down to the Carolinas, but it was being played in North and South Carolina at least as early as the Civil War. By the early years of the twentieth century, the game had become a dominant form of entertainment in both states--and has remained a part of many communities across the Carolinas ever since. This work is a collection of 25 nonfiction stories about baseball as it has been played in the Carolinas from its early days to the present. Contributors to this work include Marshall Adesman writing about his love for the Durham Athletic Park, David Beal remembering the last bus trip the Winston-Salem Warthogs made to play the Durham Bulls in 1997 before the Bulls became a Triple A team, Robert Gaunt writing about the All-American Girls Baseball League and its players in South Carolina, Thomas Perry telling the story of Shoeless Joe Jacksons start in baseball in the textile leagues, Parker Chesson relating the 1947 Albemarle League playoff, and Bijan Bayne chronicling black professional baseball in North Carolina from World War I to the Depression, just to name a few.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, enshrines some players whose worthiness seems questionable to the games most knowledgeable fans--and excludes others whose credentials are remarkable. Critics of the current voting system, which uses two sets of electors and has been used for over sixty years, argue that it is too subjective--the only measurable requirement is that the player have at least ten years of major league service at the position for which he is selected. This critical and statistical study identifies the errors of selection and omission in Hall of Fame voting. It proposes a method that adapts objective, statistical criteria to the current selection process. The method preserves positives that exist in the current subjective method, while simultaneously reducing the likelihood of injustices to players, managers, and Negro Leaguers.

In baseball, as in much poetry, beauty comes from tension. Groundrules and boundaries confine those who would play, but the best find ways to exploit their strictures, and just as the daring base runner takes second on a fly to right, the practiced poet trips the sleepy reader with a surprise rhyme, bold line break, or a jarring reversal of foot. Its no surprise, then, that hardball has a larger body of literature than other sports, or that aficionados are more likely than others to quote lines of verse in support of the game they love. This is Tim Peelers second book of poems from baseball. It contains some of his most moving and best-crafted poetry. Starting with time-honored themes--fathers and sons, baseball and time, memory and the nation, team and player and loyalty--the poet adapts the universal to the local and personal, proving that baseball, with its easy accommodation of reflection, remains a powerful tool for mining our individual and collective history.

Between 1876 and 1960, nearly 100 northeastern Pennsylvanians played, managed, coached or umpired in the major leagues. Many were the sons of immigrant coal miners and living and working conditions in America were quite different from what they had been used to Baseball became an important part of the assimilation process and it thrived as a church-sponsored form of recreation and entertainment for the coal miners and their families This work explores the childhood, and minor and major league experiences of Christy Mathewson, Stan Coveleski, Stanley ""Bucky"" Harris, Hughie Jennings, Fd Walsh, Nestor Chylak, Joe Bolinsky, Jake Daubert, John ""Buck"" Freeman, Mike Gazella, Pete Wyshner John Edward Murphy, Steve O'Neill, John Picus, Joe ""Lefty"" Shaute, Steve Bilko, Harry Dorish, Bob Dutiba Joe ""Professor"" Ostrowski, and Stan Pawloski - 21 players managers, and umpires who exemplify the great talent, dedication, humility, and hardship that many northeastern Pennsylvanians experienced.

Many assume incorrectly that confrontations between baseballs players and management began in the 1960s when the Major League Baseball Players Association started showing signs of becoming a union to be reckoned with. (The tensions of the 1960s prompted the owners to form the Player Relations Committee to deal with them and in February 1968, the two groups negotiated the games first Basic Agreement.) The struggles between players and management to gain the upper hand did not, however, start there--the two groups have had numerous clashes since baseball began (as well as since the 1968 agreement). There have been various periods of conflict and peace throughout the century and before. This work traces the history of the relationship between players and management from baseball's early years to the new challenges and developing tensions that led to spring training lockouts instigated by the owners and to player strikes in 1972, 1981, 1985, and 1994. An important agreement in 1996 brought labor peace once again. The future of player-management relations is also covered.

Nineteen-twenty was a crucial year not just for the Chicago White Sox but for the game of baseball, in the aftermath of the 1919 World Series scandal. This work is both a collective biography of four individuals whose careers in baseball were forever altered in 1920 and an examination of the 1920 baseball season as a whole. It highlights four legendary personalities--Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the longtime commissioner of Major League Baseball; Babe Ruth, the great pitcher and slugger who changed the game forever; Buck Weaver, the true lone innocent among the Black Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series; and Rube Foster, the fine pitcher, imaginative manager, and great administrator of blackball who founded the Negro National League. Key events that affected the season and the history of baseball are discussed. Nineteen-twenty was the year that Ruth shattered his own home run record and began a hitting spree that brought in record numbers of fans to the ballparks. It was the year that Rube found a way for large numbers of African-Americans to play the game meaningfully, before loyal crowds, despite Jim Crow laws that kept them out of the majors and minors.

From Bushville: "The game is a fine construct. Its trace through anyones life can range from a youthful diversion to a full-blown career, a tender small-fingered grasp to a deep muscular understanding. It provides a focus and a way to express the physical self in a physical world. Ive played every moment of every game in my life as an amateur in the best sense of that word--doing something I love just for the love of it. The roots of that soulful effort run as deep as my earliest memories, measuring them. And possibly, yours likewise." To play baseball is to become part of the game. One need not be a megabuck star to live baseball as a participant, to figure into its geometry and its drama. The friendly exertions of amateur play lie at the heart of the sport, comprising the wellspring of its professional levels. Here viewed as a pastime through the eyes of a lifelong amateur player, baseball unfolds as an experience of motion and time and senses--the work of muscle, the textures of wood and leather, the warmth of sun, the scents of a grassy field. In the timeless continuity of the game can be glimpsed part of baseballs singular appeal: the lively tension between the momentary and the eternal, what is over and what is never over. The interwoven essays making up Bushville are a poignant reflection upon the pursuit of what is essentially a ball, but what is crucially human as well.

Hal Chase is considered by many to be one of the best first basemen ever to play the game of baseball. He was able to make the routine look spectacular, the spectacular look routine. But Chase will never have his plaque in Cooperstown because he has gone down in history as the biggest crook in baseball. Chase was repeatedly accused of throwing games, bribing players, betting against his own team, and various other crimes, yet with his relaxed nature he always managed to get off the hook for his misdeeds by working his charm. His major league career lasted from 1905 to 1919, and by the mid-1930s he was a destitute alcoholic living off friends. The last fifteen years of Chase's life saw him hospitalized repeatedly for a variety of ailments, living off a sister and brother-in-law who loathed him. This work traces the turbulent life and times of Hal Chase from his humble beginnings to his sad end.

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.""

The Crowley Millers were the talk of minor league baseball in the 1950s, with crowds totaling nearly 10 times Crowley's population and earning Crowley the nickname of "The Best Little Baseball Town in the World." The Best Little Baseball Town in the World: The Crowley Millers and Minor League Baseball in the 1950s tells the fun, quirky story of Crowley, Louisiana, in the fifties, a story that reads more like fiction than nonfiction. The Crowley Millers' biggest star was Conklyn Meriwether, a slugger who became infamous after he retired when he killed his in-laws with an axe. Their former manager turned out to be a con man, dying in jail while awaiting trial on embezzlement charges. The 1951 team was torn to pieces after their young centerfielder was struck and killed by lightning during a game. But aside from the tragedy and turmoil, the Crowley Millers also played some great baseball and were the springboard to stardom for George Brunet and Dan Pfister, two Crowley pitchers who made it to the majors. Interviews with players from the team bring to light never-before-heard stories and inside perspectives on minor league baseball in the fifties, including insight into the social and racial climate of the era, and the inability of baseball in the fifties to help players deal with off-the-field problems. Written by respected minor-league baseball historian Gaylon H. White, The Best Little Baseball Town in the World is a fascinating tale for baseball fans and historians alike.