| Description |
1 online resource (1 audio file (10hr., 38 min.)) : digital. |
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digital digital recording rda |
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data file rda |
| Access |
Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Performer |
Read by George Newbern. |
| Summary |
The fascinating, true, origin story of baseball-how America's first great sport developed and how it conquered a nation Baseball's true founders don't have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs-ordinary people-who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Unlike today's pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. But that's not the way the story has been told. The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn't. You have read that baseball's color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball's first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics-and modern pitching. Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren't invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn't part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall. When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseball's amazing amateurs had already done that. Thomas W. Gilbert's history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by origin stories and American culture. "Explains how almost all conventional wisdom about baseball's origins and formative years is wrong. A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat." "Gilbert digs deep into baseball history to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the origins of the American pastime…originated by a group of amateurs in New York City."" "How Baseball Happened is a brilliant new approach to our game, and its author tells a hundred stories you haven't heard before." "This is a tart and funny trip through the raucous and aspiring culture that shaped baseball, with its volunteer firefighters, urban professionals, bloodstained butchers, and brawling gamblers." "A lively and often funny account of how baseball became THE national sport. At once irreverent and loving, Gilbert explodes baseball's founding myths while painting a rich portrait of a forgotten America." |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
Baseball -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
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Baseball -- Economic aspects -- United States.
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| Added Author |
Newbern, George, 1964- narrator.
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Thorn, John, 1947- writer of introduction.
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hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9781665011785 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
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1665011785 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
| Music No. |
MWT14335502 |
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