Past Time; Baseball as History

New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiii, [1], 258 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Few writers know more about baseball's role in American life than Jules Tygiel. Now he ranges across the last century and a half in an intriguing look at baseball as history, and history as reflected in baseball. We witness the true birth of modern baseball with the development of its elaborate statistics--the brainchild of English-born reformer, Henry Chadwick. Tygiel offers insightful looks at the role of rags-to-riches player-owners in the formation of the American League and he describes the complex struggle to establish African-American baseball in a segregated world. He examines baseball during the Great Depression, the rapid relocation of franchises in the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of fantasy camps in the 1980s. In this groundbreaking book, the field is American history and baseball itself is the star. Jules Tygiel was a historian whose Brooklyn upbringing inspired his highly regarded scholarship on Jackie Robinson and on the integration of American society seen through the lens of baseball. Mr. Tygiel taught history at San Francisco State University. His published works include the story of C. C. Julian, the Los Angeles oil business con man of the 1920's, and a biography of Ronald Reagan. But if the classroom and the library were Mr. Tygiel's intellectual haunts, his heart was on the ball field. He wrote or edited other books about race and baseball, including "Past Time: Baseball as History". Derived from a Kirkus review" A full-innings exploration of some less celebrated (and a few better-known) moments in baseball's history, by historian and fan Tygiel. The ten essays in this collection portray the rise of baseball in the mid-19th century; the invention of baseball statistics; a combined study of Charles Comiskey, Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Clark Griffith; a look at baseball in the 1920s; a portrait of Branch Rickey; the story of Larry MacPhail in the Depression; an examination of baseball under the Jim Crow laws; an account of Bobby Thompson's famous "Shot Heard Round the World"; the history of baseball's move west in the 1950s; and an overview of the game in the 1980s. Tygiel's highly interpretative writing offers fresh perspective on the history of the sport and, more importantly, offer insight into the general histories of the times through the prism of the game. The chapter on the "Shot Heard Round the World" looks first at the fabulous home run, then at the emerging medium of television that broadcast the news, as well as at radio and Gil Hodge's famous incantation, "The Giants Win the Pennant!" The essay on baseball's move into new markets in the years after 1953 offers a refreshing (and contrary) view of several teams" moves to new markets, including the Boston Braves" move to Milwaukee and the St. Louis Browns" move to Baltimore—refreshing, that is, because Tygiel lingers not on the heartsick nostalgia of fans whose teams left town but rather on the excitement of fans whose cities would now have live, major-league baseball. Although the characters that Tygiel portrays throughout his essays (such as Branch Rickey, Ford Frick, and Connie Mack) are vivid and come to life effortlessly, it is in showing the broad sweep of baseball's history that Tygiel excels.