Mary Craig - Böcker

2026 Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal finalist Baseball’s relationship to American ideals has long been an object of study across disciplines. In Touching Home, Mary Craig contributes to this ongoing study by relating issues of class, race, and gender to America’s theoretical tradition of liberalism and republicanism established during the nation’s founding era. Specifically, Touching Home traces theories of individualism and civic virtue from the founding era through baseball’s place in American society at the end of the twentieth century. The work also examines the mythologizing of baseball’s pastoralism, racial equality, and inculcation of manliness as a civic virtue. These myths became ingrained in baseball in significant ways, including, for example, the Supreme Court’s granting of an antitrust exemption to Major League Baseball; MLB’s promotion of Jackie Robinson’s career as proof of its leadership in and commitment to desegregation; and the short-lived All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-1954) and subsequent relegation of women to softball. Through the exploration of these and other societal issues, Craig’s work highlights baseball’s development from accessible hobby to multi-billion-dollar corporation, exploring the ways in which the sport has helped shape how individual Americans engage with politics. Indeed, in the pages of Touching Home readers will find a demythologizing of baseball that helps them better understand the results of their efforts to form community through engaging with teams at both the local and national levels. Scholars of American politics, particularly American political thought, will be intrigued to find baseball used as a case study of the effectiveness of the founders’ project of crafting a jointly liberal-republican framework capable of directing Americans toward responsible citizenship. In all of these ways, Touching Home upholds the value of studying popular culture, presenting baseball as a unique and highly interesting lens through which to help us appreciate how individual Americans relate to politics and parties in their respective communities and nationally.

Mary Craig’s moving account of how she found the strength to cope with the overwhelming problems of bringing up a profoundly disabled child, and how she survived when tragedy struck a second time, is one of the most outstanding autobiographies of our day. Against all the odds and despite her own crippling fears and anxieties, Mary found joy in the face of deep suffering by turning outwards to the needs of others, volunteering in the Sue Ryder Homes where concentration camp survivors enabled her to find fresh courage. Since it was first published in the late 1970s, Blessings has won various awards, been serialized on BBC radio, appeared in numerous national bestseller lists, chosen by several eminent figures as their book of the year, published in a dozen languages and been the focus of television documentaries in the UK and the US. This is an inspirational book for all who are struggling to make sense of any kind of suffering.