Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War |
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Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War
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by George B. Kirsch
Sales Rank: 650053
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Discount: 22 %
List Price: $14.95
$10.17
At Amazon
on 6-1-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 168 pages
Published by: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition January 22, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0691130434
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0691130439
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
Weighs: 5.6 ounces
Greg Pierce, Washington Times
" documents games played in camp between battles and in Union and Confederate prisons when the men were healthy enough."
Product Review
Choice : Kirsch looks at the emerging organizational sophistication of urban and collegiate baseball on the home front, and he sketches out the social and racial contours of what was already often seen as the national game. . . . A careful scholar, he savors using evidence to demolish myth.
David Wee American Historical Review : The book is a pleasure to read, and deserves numerous votes for the current literary All-Star Game.
Jeff Diamant Newark Star-Ledger : George P. Kirsch has written an interesting, readable book about the sport's growth during the Civil War that teaches readers how the game evolved into the national pastime.
John Sickels Civil War History : Although baseball shares the public stage with other sports nowadays, it is still the professional sport most prominent in American historical consciousness. George B. Kirsch's book offers an intriguing look at the very early years of baseball, which were intertwined with the crucible of the Civil War. . . . Overall, this is a solid examination of the subject and will be of interest to sports and baseball historians, in particular, but also those scholars and general readers interested in the social history of the Civil War.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War (Hardcover)
The title of George B. Kirsch's book Baseball in Blue & Gray is a tad misleading. It implies that the book is a history of baseball as played by soldiers in the American Civil War. Though one chapter, titled battlefront, is devoted to baseball as it was played in the military and prison camps of that war, the remainder of the book is best captured by its sub-title - The National Pastime During the Civil War. As a history of how baseball developed, progressed, and grew into the American National Pastime during the first half of the 1860s, this book does a fine job. If, however, you are looking for a book full of Civil War baseball antidotes, you will find this book a disappointment. Kirsch begins with a quick history lesson on the origins of baseball. He claims that the game is distantly related to the English game of rounders, not the more famous English bat and ball game cricket. Rounders underwent a major transformation in America, and emerged as the game of townball, a unique American version of the game that was widely played throughout the country in the antebellum years. In the 1840s, a New York club, the Knickerbockers, developed rules of play for townball that qualified it as the earliest form of baseball. This New York style of play became quickly popular, and by the 1850s had spread all over the region and beyond. Kirsch claims that the soldiers in the Civil War helped to spread the new form of the game around the country, but has little more than antidotal evidence for this claim. The real virtue of Baseball in Blue & Gray is not its Civil War tie in, put the wealth of knowledge on the early development of baseball in the days before professional leagues. Kirsch shows how the game progressed from being an amusement of a few gentlemen's clubs in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston in the 1850s, to having an honest claim to the title of the National Pastime by 1870. He tells how men like Henry Chadwick and Albert Spalding help to shape what the game became, and shows why their names are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. At 135 pages, Baseball in Blue & Gray is but a brief book. It is written in a clear and concise manner, and is easy reading. Anyone interested in the history of the origins and development of baseball should find it worthwhile, although those who are searching primarily for the Civil War angle may find it a bit disappointing, as it was somewhat of a stretch to market this baseball history as Civil War literature. Theo Logos
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Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War
Available from Amazon
Price: $10.17
Updated on 6-1-2008.
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