Baseball in America and America in Baseball (Volume 38) (Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press)

Presenting views from a variety of sport and history experts, Baseball in America and America in Baseball captures the breadth and unsuspected variety of our national fascination and identification with America’s Game. Chapters cover such well-known figures as Ty Cobb and lesser-known topics like the “invisible” baseball played by Japanese Americans during the 1930s and 1940s. A study of baseball in rural California from the Gold Rush to the turn of the twentieth century provides an interesting glimpse at how the game evolved from its earliest beginnings to something most modern observers would find familiar. Chapters on the Negro League’s Baltimore Black Sox, financial profits of major league teams from 1900 to 1956, and American aspirations to a baseball-led cultural hegemony during the first half of the twentieth century round out this superb collection of sport history scholarship. Baseball in America and America in Baseball belongs on the bookshelf of any avid student of the game and its history. It also provides interesting glimpses into the sociology of sport in America. Introduction / Richard Crepeau -- Our Players Are Mostly Farmers : Baseball In Rural California, 1850 To 1890 / David Vaught -- Invisible Baseball : Japanese Americans And Their Game In The 1930s / Samuel O. Regalado -- Chasing Shadows : The Baltimore Black Sox And The Perils Of History / Daniel A. Nathan -- The Profits Of Major League Baseball, 1900 To 1956 / Steven A. Riess -- Mapping An Empire Of Baseball : American Visions Of National Pastimes And Global Influence, 1919 To 1941 / Mark Dyreson -- Matters Involving Honor : Region, Race, And Rank In The Violent Life Of Tyrus Raymond Cobb / Benjamin G. Rader. Edited By Donald G. Kyle And Robert B. Fairbanks ; Introduction By Richard Crepeau ; With Contributions By Benjamin G. Rader ... [et Al.]. Captures the breadth and variety of the national fascination and identification with baseball. This book includes a study of baseball in rural California from the Gold Rush to the turn of the twentieth century which provides a glimpse at how the game evolved from its earliest beginnings to something modern observers would find familiar.