Though many of his contemporaries considered him second only to Babe Ruth in the 1920s and 1930s, Mickey Cochrane is often overlooked by fans and historians. The hard-hitting catcher played on three World Series winners. Fiercely competitive on the field, Cochrane was a true gentleman off it. Though he was a highly regarded member of the A's championship teams, it is his career in Depression-era Detroit that he is best remembered. The pressure of the adulation there and his duties as player, manager and Tigers vice president led to a breakdown in 1935. On his way to recovery, he was hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Bump Hadley and was nearly killed, ending his career. This full story of Cochrane's Hall of Fame career and his off-field life was researched from primary documents and interviews with his family.

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.

One of the greatest pitchers of the 19th century, Tim Keefe (1857-1933) was an ardent believer in the artisan work ethic that was becoming outmoded in burgeoning industrial America. A master craftsman, he compiled 342 career victories during his 14-season Major League career, while adapting to numerous changes in pitching rules during the 1880s. Known as a strategic pitcher, he outsmarted batters, particularly with his change-of-pace pitch. He led the New York Giants to the National League pennant in 1888 and 1889, establishing a Major League record with 19 consecutive pitching victories in 1888. He taught pitching as a college baseball coach, wrote several articles about his craft and established a sporting goods firm where he manufactured a baseball of his own design. He was a proponent for players' rights as the secretary of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, which formed the ill-fated Players' League in 1890. This first ever biography of Keefe covers the career of the 1964 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.

The history of Major League doubleheaders is presented in this volume, beginning with their inception as a way to make up missed games, to their current decline as a result of changes in society. The role of the doubleheader as a celebration of holidays and as a Sunday event is explained, as well as its crucial role in enabling Major League Baseball to survive as an economic entity during the Great Depression and World War II.

This history-oriented book delves deeply into the thirty-nine seasons of operation as a minor league of the New England League, not only from the baseball aspects but also the region's economic aspects, since they seem to have run parallel with the rise and decline of the textile industry in New England. The book traces the development, ups and downs of the New England League through the many cities that once maintained franchises. The history of the New England League is a wild ride through many epochs of baseball and economic history, which provides a microcosm of a changing America. The history of the New England League is rich in characters, stories, and oddities that occurred on the playing field, which was extensively covered by contemporary newspapers. This book unearths the rich history of the New England League, which lay buried within a mountain of newspaper microfilm lying undisturbed in filing cabinets in libraries across the region. It focuses on the cultural aspects of the league's history and the primary people that shaped results in those areas while bringing life to information that is hidden far beneath the surface of the New England League history. One unique element of the book is the development of the reference sources, as there are virtually no secondary references with extensive writings on the league. The photographs included add more uniqueness to the book, as they have been hidden away in files and have never been published before.

For 52 years, Boston was a two-team Major League city, home to both the Red Sox and the Braves. This comprehensive study focuses on the two team's period of coexistence and competition for fan allegiance. The author analyzes the Boston fan base through trends in transportation, communication, geography, population and employment. Tracing the pendulum of fan preference between the two teams over five distinct time periods, a deeper understanding emerges of why the Red Sox remained in Boston and the Braves moved to Milwaukee.