Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins

Inside Early Baseball in Illinois

AvRobert D. Sampson

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

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Beskrivning

Winner of the Russell P. Strange Book of the Year Award from the Illinois State Historical SocietyBaseball’s spread across Illinois paralleled the sport’s explosive growth in other parts of the country.Robert D. Sampson taps a wealth of archival research to transport readers to an era when an epidemic of “base ball on the brain” raged from Alton to Woodstock. Focusing on the years 1865 to 1869, Sampson offers a vivid portrait of a game where local teams and civic ambition went hand in hand and teams of paid professionals displaced gentlemen’s clubs devoted to sporting fair play. This preoccupation with competition sparked rules disputes and controversies over imported players while the game itself mirrored society by excluding Black Americans and women. The new era nonetheless brought out paying crowds to watch the Rock Island Lively Turtles, Fairfield Snails, and other teams take the field up and down the state. A first-ever history of early baseball in Illinois, Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins adds the Prairie State game’s unique shadings and colorful stories to the history of the national pastime.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2023-05-02
Mått:152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt:426 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:264
Förlag:University of Illinois Press
ISBN:9780252087189

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Mer om författaren

Robert D. Sampson is the editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and the author of John L. O’Sullivan and His Times.

Recensioner i media

"Highly entertaining with useful appendices." --Spitball Magazine "Provides a wealth of detail about the origins of the Illinois game and the teams who played it from Chicago down south to Cairo and nearly every town in between." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A delightful collection of history and baseball anecdotes for both casual and serious baseball fans." --Illinois Times "Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins makes clear that there was a simplicity, innocence, and freshness to baseball in Illinois in these years, even as Sampson details the movement-probably inevitable-toward a more competitive and more professional level of play." --Third Coast Review "Effectively blends history and nostalgia, sparking an appreciation of the National pastime. . . . This 250-page gem by Robert D. Sampson is an exhaustive focus on baseball's early style and sweep when gentlemanly players, civic leaders, and hosts of spectators stressed the bliss more than the score." --Community Word “Detailed studies of baseball during these crucial years are rare, with ones that focus on a single state even more so. Bob Sampson’s Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins is thus both timely and valuable, confirming some long-accepted assumptions and forcing reexamination of others. Highly recommended!”--Peter Morris, author of Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan

Innehållsförteckning

Acknowledgments Prologue A Dying Ember First Inning Baseball Fever and Pioneers Second Inning Organizing Clubs, Funding, Travel, and the Game’s Rituals Third Inning Playing Fields, Gambling, and Injuries Fourth Inning The Game and Its Players Fifth Inning Sharing the Fun Sixth Inning Barriers of Race and Gender Seventh Inning Trouble in Baseball’s Eden Eighth Inning Representative Teams Ninth Inning The Thrill Departs Epilogue Ghosts Appendix A Illinois Baseball Teams, 1865-70 Appendix B Bloomington’s Fifth Ward School-Grounds Neighborhood Appendix C Illinois Baseball Players, 1865-70 Notes Bibliography Index