Breaking the Slump is the engrossing story of baseball during the
1930s, when the National Pastime came of age as a business, an
entertainment, and a passion, and when the teams of the American
and National Leagues fielded perhaps the greatest rosters in the
history of the game. Whether as rookies, stars in their prime, or
legends on the wane, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Hank
Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio all left
their mark on the game and on the American imagination in the
decade before America's entry into the World War II. In one
remarkable year, 1934, the entire starting lineup of the American
League All-Stars consisted of future Hall of Famers. This surfeit
of talent provided much needed entertainment to a nation struggling
through economic hardship on an enormous scale. In the face of the
Great Depression, noted baseball historian Charles C. Alexander
shows, Organized Baseball underwent an array of changes that
defined the structure and operation of the game well into the
postwar decades. The 1930s witnessed the advent of night baseball,
the flowering of an extensive and, in some cases, controversial
minor-league system of "farm clubs," and the exploitation of the
relatively new broadcast medium of radio. Power brokers such as
Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and owners Branch Rickey and
"Colonel" Jacob Ruppert oversaw these and other developments even
as they retained other traditional aspects of the game. As it had
since the 1880s, the reserve clause continued to limit the salaries
and mobility of ballplayers, subjecting them to the will of
ownership to a degree unfathomable today. And Organized Baseball
remained racially segregated throughout the 1930s, as the Negro
leagues operated largely beyond the notice of white baseball fans.
While tracing these and other organizational developments,
Alexander keeps his focus on the daily experience of the
ballplayers. What was it like for young men trying to make their
way as professional ballplayers in an economy that offered few
prospects for them otherwise? What kind of conditions did they have
to deal with in terms of playing facilities, transportation,
lodging, and relations with their employers? And what about the
play itself? Alexander offers an expert appraisal of how the
ballplayers and the quality of the game they played differed from
today's.Americans have periodically been reminded of baseball's
extraordinary capacity to enrich and enliven the national spirit
during hard times. Breaking the Slump is a vivid portrait of the
great game and its cultural significance during America's hardest
times.
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