Baseball in the Garden of Eden : the secret history of the early game / John Thorn.
2011
GV863.A1 T458 2011 (Mapit)
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Title
Baseball in the Garden of Eden : the secret history of the early game / John Thorn.
Author
Thorn, John, 1947-
Edition
1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.
ISBN
9780743294034
0743294033
0743294033
Publication Details
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Language
English
Description
xvi, 365 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Call Number
GV863.A1 T458 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
796.357097309034
Summary
Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Did baseball even have a father--or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling, a proxy form of class warfare. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. Full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes, this book tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed--all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.--From publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Table of Contents
Anointing Abner
Four fathers, two roads
The cradle of baseball
The cauldron of baseball
War in heaven
A national pastime
The big idea
Union and brotherhood
Sporting goods and higher thought
The gospel of baseball
The white city and the golden West
The religion of baseball.
Four fathers, two roads
The cradle of baseball
The cauldron of baseball
War in heaven
A national pastime
The big idea
Union and brotherhood
Sporting goods and higher thought
The gospel of baseball
The white city and the golden West
The religion of baseball.