Leading Off: 19th Century Superstars Who Shaped Professional Baseball - Paperback

by Ray Scheetz (Author)

Not only is baseball America's national pastime, it is also a sport that evokes nostalgia and historic comparisons. While the game has experienced changes, it has remained fundamentally recognizable for more than a century and a half, and museums and memorabilia collections remind us of how present the game's history remains. At the same time, the histories of the game and the men that played it are so vast and rich, key and compelling elements can easily be overlooked. Furthermore, the mythology that baseball conjures can sometimes obscure its factual episodes. Leading Off provides a series of eighteen brief, yet detailed biographies of the first generation of baseball superstars, players of the late-19th century. They are men who helped to establish baseball as the national game in the decades before Babe Ruth ever took the field, and their Hall of Fame careers still stand as some of the most accomplished in history more than a century after they played their final games. This book is unique because, in addition to tying the careers of superstars to the history of the game, it ties the history of baseball into the history of the United States. As a result, race issues, organized labor, literature, urbanization and other key historical issues are woven into the text and explored through the lenses of the featured players. Leading Off is written to entertain and inform a wide range of readers, from those being introduced to the game to those who have followed it for decades to those who are simply interested in what has woven baseball so tightly into the fabric of America.