Description or summary of the book: 'Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey's book proves it, without wasting a word.'-Lee Eisenberg, author of The Number In Baseball, one of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles and triumphs, and performs a marvelous feat: making a classic story seem refreshingly new. Baseball is a narrative of America's can-do spirit, in which stalwart immigrants such as Henry Chadwick could transplant cricket and rounders into the fertile American culture and in which die-hard unionist baseballers such as Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack could eventually become the tightfisted avatars of the game's big-money establishment. It's a celebration of such underdogs as a rag-armed catcher turned owner named Branch Rickey and a sure-handed fielder named Curt Flood, both of whom flourished as true great men of history. But most of all, Baseball is a testament to the unbreakable bond between our nation's pastime and the fans, who've remained loyal through the fifty-year-long interdict on black athletes, the Black Sox scandal, franchise relocation, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by some major stars. Reverent, playful, and filled with Vecsey's charm, Baseball begs to be read in the span of a rain-delayed doubleheader, and so enjoyable that, like a favorite team's championship run, one hopes it never ends. 'Vecsey possesses a journalist's eye for detail and a historian's feel for the sweep of action. His research is scrupulous and his writing crisp. This book is an instant classic- a highly readable guide to America's great enduring pastime.' - The Louisville Courier Journal From the Hardcover edition.
Estimated reading time (average reader): 15H6M39S
Other categories, genre or collection: Baseball, History Of The Americas, Social & Cultural History
Available formats: EPUB, WORD, DOCX, TXT, FB2, TXTz, DOC, PDF. Compressed in TBZ2, RAR, TAR.BZ2, LHA, XZ, ZIP