Bat, Ball & Bible: Baseball and Sunday Observance in New York
“Charles DeMotte’sBat, Ball, & Biblesignificantly enlarges our understanding of the watershed battle between the national pastime and Sunday blue laws during the early decades of the last century. Deftly contextualizing the social and cultural divisions punctuating the debate over playing baseball on the Christian Sabbath, DeMotte brilliantly illuminates the grassroots struggle in New York State between traditional and emergent values.”—William M. Simons, professor of history, SUNY Oneonta, and director/editor, Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture“Ball, Bat & Bibleilluminates a whole era. The author not only provides a fascinating glimpse into an obscure area of baseball history, but also employs it to illuminate a particular period in American history itself, linking the blue laws of the past with World War I, Prohibition, and the general desperation to force the recreation into conformity with a stern Protestant ethos. Thank God it failed.”—George Grella, professor of English and film studies, University of Rochester“Bat, Ball & Bibleserves up a nuanced and expertly researched analysis of America’s pastime at the intersection of religion, politics, law, commerce, and culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. DeMotte adroitly situates titanic historical shifts and the play of countervailing social forces within the rich context of New York life, from the boroughs to the fields and parks of upstate communities.”—Mark Worrell, professor of sociology and anthropology, SUNY Cortland"Bat, Ball and Bibleis a richly detailed analysis of the Sunday baseball debate in New York State. Historians, baseball fans and sports fans in general will relish in DeMotte’s account of the transformation of rigid Sunday restrictions that touched the many levels of the sport. In our current world where work and play collide and box scores appear at our fingertips 24/7, DeMotte reminds us of a time when baseball had to fight its way into the shifting moral and social order of the day."—Lisa R. Neilson, professor of English, Marist College"This book will long stand as the standard treatment of the Sunday baseball issue in New York."—Benjamin G. Rader,Journal of American History