Download or read book Ball Bat and Bishop written by Robert William Henderson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step aside, Abner Doubleday! In this impeccably researched history, Robert W. Henderson uncovers the true origins not only of baseball but of a score of related sports involving hitting, catching, throwing, or kicking a ball. Henderson traces the origins of ball sports to religious rites in ancient Egypt, where the ball (perhaps a shrunken head) represented a fertility symbol and opposing teams engaged in mock combat signifying the struggle of good against evil. Centuries later, pagan fertility rites featuring the ball were adapted by the Christian church as rituals symbolic of Easter and the Resurrection. Court tennis was also firmly rooted in the church, the earliest players being the bishops, canons, and clerics who played it in their cloistered courtyards. Henderson overturns the popular belief that the game of racquets originated in the debtors' prison on Fleet Street in the early nineteenth century. He also notes that polo, the most ancient of games played with stick and ball, originated in Persia and migrated to China and India, where it was eventually embraced by English imperialists. Other sports discussed include football, lawn tennis, cricket, and golf. The most substantial portion of Henderson's study is devoted to the game of baseball. Providing copious evidence of early forms of baseball played in England and the United States before 1829, he offers a meticulous account of the legerdemain by which Abner Doubleday, the famous Civil War general, came to be identified as the inventor in 1839 of a game that was already at least two centuries old. The new foreword by Leonard Koppett affirms the significance of this classic work of sports history, which was the first to dismantle the Doubleday/Cooperstown myth.
Download or read book Ball Bat and Bishop The Origin of Ball Games Etc With Plates written by Robert William HENDERSON (of the New York Public Library.) and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ball Bat and Bishop the Origin of Ball Games written by Robert W. Henderson and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Deconstructing Sport History written by Murray G. Phillips and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection challenges the accepted principles and practices of sport history and encourages sport historians to be more adventurous in their representations of the sporting past in the present. Encompassing a wide range of critical approaches, leading international sport historians reflect on theory, practice, and the future of sport history. They survey the field of sport history since its inception, examine the principles that have governed the production of knowledge in sport history, and address the central concerns raised by the postmodern challenge to history. Sharing a common desire to critique contemporary practices in sport history, the contributors raise the level of critical analysis of the production of historical knowledge, provide examples of approaches by those who have struggled with or adapted to the postmodern challenge, and open up new avenues for future sport historians to follow.
Download or read book The Prehistories of Baseball written by Seelochan Beharry and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball's roots lie deep in our ancestral past. The ancient arts of throwing (distance warfare), hitting (close quarters combat), and running (attack and retreat) were woven into the earliest forms of baseball. Early humans recognized the importance of the sun and sought to placate it with sacrificial offerings, imitating its movements and deifying it. Myths and relics of these foundational practices and beliefs were carried westward across the Old World by Indo-European peoples. Games for the early British and Continental Europeans (notably the Celts and Druids) served military, religious, social and educational needs. As the Celts and Druids came under the control of the Roman Empire, and later the Christian Church, their customs and practices, including games, fell out of favor. Despite persecution, some folk games survived the millennia under such names as "stool-ball," "tut-ball," and "base-ball." Descendants of these peoples brought their variant games to the New World where the standardization of various informal rules led to their rapid spread. Baseball, with its underlying beliefs, superstitions and practices, still brings us together with familiar and comforting rituals as we assemble under the sun.
Download or read book A Legend for the Legendary written by James A. Vlasich and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins of baseball are controversial. James A. Vlasich discusses the debates between two men intimately involved in nineteenth-century baseball, Henry Chadwick and Albert G. Spalding. Abner Graves of the Mills Commission claimed that Abner Doubleday had invented the game and he had done it in Cooperstown, New York. This claim was scrutinized at the time but the myth became etched into baseball history. Through the years, however, some critics have questioned the Mills Commission report. The problem is that the Baseball Hall of Fame is built on this shaky foundation. The lack of diligence on the part of Spalding's self-appointed committee has led to a credibility gap for the baseball shrine that continues a half century after its dedication. Indeed, the story of the building of the Baseball Hall of Fame is filled with intrigue worthy of a political thriller.
Download or read book Understanding Baseball written by Trey Strecker and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of baseball history and culture shows the national pastime to be a forum of debate where issues of sport, labor, race, character and the ethics of work and play are decided. An understanding of baseball calls for consideration of different perspectives. This very readable textbook offers insights into baseball history as a subject worthy of scholarly attention. Each chapter introduces a specific disciplinary approach--history, economics, media, law and fiction--and poses representative questions scholars from these fields would consider. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Download or read book Handbook of Sports Studies written by Jay Coakley and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-08-29 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback, this vital handbook marks the development of sports studies as a major new discipline within the social sciences. Edited by the leading sociologist of sport, Eric Dunning, and Jay Coakley, author of the best selling textbook on sport in the USA, it both reflects and richly endorses this new found status. Key aspects of the Handbook include: an inventory of the principal achievements in the field; a guide to the chief conflicts and difficulties in the theory and research process; a rallying point for researchers who are established or new to the field, which sets the agenda for future developments; a resource book for teachers who wish to establish new curricula and develop courses and programmes in the area of sports studies. With an international and inter-disciplinary team of contributors the Handbook of Sports Studies is comprehensive in scope, relevant in content and far-reaching in its discussion of future prospect.
Download or read book City People written by Gunther Barth and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1982-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explains the parallel development of urbanization and modernization in late nineteenth-century American society, demonstrating how the successful features of big-city life spread across the country and transformed towns all over America.
Download or read book Routledge Companion to Sports History written by S. W. Pope and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-17 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents comprehensive guidance to the international field of sports history as it has developed as an academic area of study. This book guides readers through the development of the field across a range of thematic and geographical contexts. It is suitable for researchers and students in, and entering, the sports history field.
Download or read book When Johnny Came Sliding Home written by William J. Ryczek and published by McFarland. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Civil War ended, the thoughts of many Northern soldiers turned to a game that some had learned about for the first time during the war--baseball. Their newfound interest in the sport, combined with the postwar economic boom and the resultant growth of many cities, took the game from one practiced by a few amateur clubs in New York City before the war to a professional sport covering almost the entire northeastern United States. Researched from primary sources, the game of the late 1860s is described season-by-season: the fields, the crowds, the strategy, the rules, the style of play, and the confusing struggles to crown a national champion, with all the chicanery and machinations of the contenders. Such landmark events as the Washington Nationals' pioneering 1867 tour and the Cincinnati Red Stockings' undefeated 1869 season are covered.
Download or read book Baseball FAQ written by Tom DeMichael and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (FAQ Pop Culture). Was Abner Doubleday the architect of baseball? What exactly did it mean to be a "professional" baseball player in the 1870s? What goes on in the front office? What exactly is the Eephus pitch? What are "the tools of ignorance"? Readers will find the answers to these questions and many others in the pages of this remarkable baseball reference that's essential reading for fans of the game. Part history book, part instructional guide, and part reference manual, Baseball FAQ covers all the bases from the rules of the game to the ballparks of yesterday and today, from the minors to the major league, from the stats to the food. This engaging, compulsively readable tome offers baseball fans of all ages a wealth of fun facts and anecdotes on America's favorite pastime, including sections on the All-American Girls Professional Ball League, the Negro Leagues, the basic skills of baseball, baseball in the movies, the scandals, and the Hall of Famers.
Download or read book Transpacific Field of Dreams written by Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball has joined America and Japan, even in times of strife, for over 150 years. After the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu explains, baseball was introduced there by American employees of the Japanese government tasked with bringing Western knowledge and technology to the country, and Japanese students in the United States soon became avid players. In the early twentieth century, visiting Japanese warships fielded teams that played against American teams, and a Negro League team arranged tours to Japan. By the 1930s, professional baseball was organized in Japan where it continued to be played during and after World War II; it was even played in Japanese American internment camps in the United States during the war. From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.
Download or read book Diamonds in the Dark written by Howard Good and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book on baseball films in American cinema
Download or read book Playing with God written by William J. Baker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spectacle of modern sport displays all the latest commercial and technological innovations, yet age-old religious concerns still thrive at the stadium. Coaches lead pre-game and post-game prayers, athletes give God the credit for home runs and touchdowns, and fans wave signs with biblical quotations and allusions. Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. Playing with God traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day. Early religious opposition to competitive sport focused on the immoderate enthusiasm of players and spectators, the betting on scores, and the preference for playing field over church on Sunday. Disapproval gradually gave way to acceptance when "wholesome recreation" for young men in crowded cities and soldiers in faraway fields became a national priority. Protestants led in the readjustment of attitudes toward sport; Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and Muslims followed. The Irish at Notre Dame, outstanding Jews in baseball, Black Muslims in the boxing ring, and born-again athletes at Liberty University represent the numerous negotiations and compromises producing the unique American mixture of religion and sport.
Download or read book Sport in Britain written by Richard William Cox and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Making the Majors written by Eric Leifer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this in-depth look at major league sports, Eric Leifer traces the growth and development of major leagues in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, and predicts fundamental changes as the majors pursue international expansion. He shows how every past expansion of sports publics has been accompanied by significant changes in the way sporting competition is organized. With each reorganization, the majors have created teams closer in ability, bringing repetition to competition across time, only to expand and energize the public's search for differences between teams and for events that disrupt the repetitive flow. The phenomenal success of league sports, Leifer writes, rests on their ability to manufacture inequalities for fans to latch on to without jeopardizing the equalities that draw fans in. Leifer supports his theory with historical detail and statistical analysis. He examines the special concerns of league organizers in pursuing competitive balance and presents a detailed analysis of how large-city domination has been undermined in the modern era of Major League Baseball. Using games from the four major league sports, he then shows how fans can themselves affect the course of competition. In NFL football, for example, fans account for nearly all of the persisting inequality in team performance. The possibility of sustaining inequality among equals emerges from the cross-pressures that fans and leagues place on competition. With substantial data in hand, Leifer asks the essential question facing the leagues today: how can they sustain a situation that depends entirely on simultaneous equality and contention, one in which fan involvement may evaporate as soon as one team dominates? His answer has significant implications for the future of major league sports, both nationally and internationally.
