Creating the National Pastime
"An astute examination of how baseball emerged as the national pastime. . . . Things liven up when [White] looks at the gambling and cheating that were a part of the game early in the century, and when he examines the growth and economic importance of night baseball and of radio and TV broadcasts. . . . Baseball cognoscenti will find plenty to chew on here."--Kirkus Reviews"Mr. White, an affectionate but agreeably dry-eyed student of the game . . . is unfailingly interesting about the influence of Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio on American attitudes about ethnicity, on the business culture of an industry in which competitors also are partners, on the evolution of the relationship between major league teams and the journalists who cover them. . . . Mr. White's insights are frequently accompanied by fascinating facts. . . ."--George F. Will,The New York Times Book Review"Remarkable. This is one of the first books about baseball that doesn't confuse the game with the author's lost boyhood, his failure to connect with Dad, or the end of American innocence. . . . one of the most original studies of baseball in years."--Jesse Berrett,LA Weekly". . . perceptively examines the ways baseball mirrored a changing American society in the first half of this century. . .White paints an especially vivid picture of the evolution of the ballpark from a small wooden structure; through the concrete-and-steel boom of 1908-15. . .White is also strong on the pervasiveness of gambling and game-throwing, and how baseball's barons responded by inventing the rhetoric of its pure, pastoral roots. . . ."--Jeff Z. Klein,New York Newsday"This book should provide real insight into [baseball's] glorious past, and why it is no accident that we remember that past as glorious."--Richard J. Tofel,The Wall Street Journal"[White] is poignant in his description of the decline of the pastoral setting, as a new generation of owners found profit in suburbia. This study represents the best of serious research into American baseball history."--Sol Gittleman,Journal of Interdisciplinary History