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But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870 |
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But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870
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by Peter Morris
Sales Rank: 14232
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List Price: $27.50
$18.15
At Amazon
on 6-1-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
Published by: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher March 25, 2008
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1566637481
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1566637480
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Morris (Game of Inches) explores the earliest days of baseball through the voices of players and journalists who wrote about it in the 27-year period in the mid-19th century before professional baseball emerged. The earliest versions of bat-and-ball games—some of the variants are town ball, wicket and even patch ball—were eventually displaced and standardized in 1845 when the Knickerbocker Club of New York City published rules that eliminated such practices as throwing the ball and hitting a base runner (an act sometimes known as soaking) to make an out. The text is an intriguing study for students of baseball history curious about how aspects of the game developed, such as the foul ball, sliding, balls and strikes, and the role of the umpire. As the game spread from its origins in New York and its popularity grew, Morris writes that two factors brought the pioneer era of amateur play to an end: the Civil War and the increasing seriousness of players who changed games from ceremonial pastime to cutthroat competitions. Morris has done vast research and quotes many of his sources at length. His focus on a detailed account of baseball's development, however, does not provide much insight into the people who played the game. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius,and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players and Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland
"[Peter Morris is] one of America's preeminent baseball historians. But Didn't We Have Fun? is exhaustively researched and artfully written."
Reader Reviews
The study of early baseball has made great strides the past couple of decades. Our knowledge is both broader and deeper than before. There has been a steady trickle of work by academic historians, a flow of work by amateurs (some of it excellent) and a community of researchers gathered under the aspices of the Society for American Baseball Research and its 19th century committee. By the nature of things it takes a while for such knowledge to work its way from specialists to books for the general reader. There have books published quite recently that could have been written forty years ago. There are numerous possible examples illustrating this point. Perhaps the best is the anachronistic expectation that early baseball players and organizations were motivated pretty much like modern baseball players and organizations. We often see sniggering condescension at the early Knickerbockers for wasting their time on banquets when they should have been practicing. The implicit assumption is that their motivation was to win games, but they kept getting distracted; or if this wasn't their motivation, it should have been. This is a hopeless way to approach history, and utterly commonplace. If we are to understand the Knickerbockers we need to understand their motivations, not impose our modern expectations on them. It is a great pleasure to see in Peter Morris's new book. He makes available recent work, combined with his knack for ferretting out an impressive collection of old accounts. He puts the familiar events into context, and allows us to approach the early players on their own terms. This is a modern history of early baseball. This isn't to say that there are no points to disagree on. There certainly are interpretations that can be disputed. This isn't the final word on the subject, but that isn't the point. This is part of an ongoing conversation, now made available to anyone interested. As always, Morris's writing is admirably readable. Early baseball geeks will keep a bookmark to refer to the endnotes nearly every page, but there is no need for the less obsessive to notice them.
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But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870
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Price: $18.15
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