About this item

From its first pitch, baseball has reflected national values and promoted the idea of what it means to be American. Beloved narratives tied the national pastime to beliefs as fundamental to our civic life as racial equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism. Mitchell Nathanson calls foul. Rejecting the myths and much-told tales, he examines how power is as much a part of baseball--and America--as pine tar and eye black. Indeed, the struggles for power within the game paralleled those that defined our nation. Nathanson follows the new Americans who sought club ownership to promote their social status in the increasingly closed caste system of nineteenth-century America. He shows how the rise and public rebuke of the Players Association reflects the collective spirit of working and middle-class America in the mid-twentieth century and the countervailing forces that sought to beat back the emerging movement. He lays bare the debilitating effects of a harsh double standard that required African American players to possess an unimpeachable character merely to take the field--a standard no white player had to meet. Told with passion and righteous outrage, A People's History of Baseball offers an incisive alternative history of America's much-loved--if misunderstood--national pastime.



About the Author

Mitchell Nathanson

Mitch Nathanson is the author of the first and only comprehensive biography of the mysterious slugger Dick Allen. In GOD ALMIGHTY HISSELF: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, he revealed in full the man behind the myth. In his latest baseball biography, BOUTON: The Life of a Baseball Original, Nathanson tells the remarkable story of Jim Bouton, the journeyman Yankee who found himself in Nowheresville, USA in 1969, otherwise known as the clubhouse of the expansion Seattle Pilots. Bouton found gold in the Upper Northwest, producing the greatest sports book of all time: BALL FOUR. BOUTON not only shows not only how he did it but digs deeper and explores the life of a man who won all of 62 games but who changed professional sports in ways 300-game winners never could. To which Bouton's Seattle Pilot teammate, Jim Gosger, would most likely say, "Yeah surrre."



Read Next Recommendation

Report incorrect product information.