Baseball A Mirror on American History: Selected Readings
Jim Harper
Associate Professor Emeritus
Texas Tech University
Reference and Historiography:
The Seventh and Eigth editions of Total Baseball, published in 2001 and 2003 constitute the official encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and contains a wealth of information on the game's history and personalities.
American History and Life, CD-ROM, 1981-1993.
Davis, Lenwood, G., Black Athletes in the United States: A Bibliography, 1800-1981, 1981.
Larry Gerlach, "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time: Baseball History, 1983-1993," Journal of Sport Hisory 21 (Summer, 1994), 103-138.
Hexter, J.H., The History Primer, 1971, 149-194.
Miscrosoft, Complete Baseball CD-ROM, 1994.
Levine, Peter, American Sport: A Documentary History, paper, Prentice-Hall 1989.
Porter, David, The Biographical Dictionary of American Sport, 4 vols. plus , 1987.
Riess, Steven A., ed. Major Problems in Sport History, 1997.
Remley, Mary Lou, Women in Sport: An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide, 1900-1990, 1991.
Sports in North America: A Documentary History *
Sullivan, Dean, Early Innings A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908, 1995.
Sullivan, Dean, Middle Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball.
The Journal of Sport History published quarterly by the North American Society of Sport History.
Selected Works Arranged Alphabetically:
Adelman, Melvin, New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-1870, 1986.
Adelson, Bruce, Brushing Back Jim Crow : The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South , 1999.
Alexander, Charles, Ty Cobb, 1983.
Alexander, Charles, John McGraw, 1988.*
Alexander, Charles, Our Game: An American Baseball History, 1991.
Alexander, Charles, Rogers Hornsby, 1995.
Anderson, David W., More Than Merkle: A History of the Best and Most Exciting baseball Season in Human History, 2000.
Ashe, Arthur, with Kip Branch, Ocania Chalk, and Francis Harris, A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, 3 vols. , 1988.
Baker, William, Sports in the Western World, 1982.
Baker William and John Carroll, Sports in Modern America, 1983.*
Beisser, Arnold. The Madness in Sports, 1967.
Berry, Robert C., William Gould and Paul Standohar, Labor Relations in Professional Sports, 1986.
Betts, John R., America's Sporting Heritage, 1950-1950, 1974.
Billet, Brel L. and Lance J. Formwalt, America's National Pastime : A Study of Race and Merit in Professional Baseball 1995 .
Browning, Reed, Cy Young: A Baseball Life, 2000.
Burk, Robert F., Never Just a Game: Players Owners, and American Baseball to 1920 1994
Burk, Robert F., Much More Than Just a Game. 2001.
Cashman, Richard and Michael McKernan (eds.), Sport in History: The Making of Modern Sporting History), 1979.
Creamer, Robert, Baseball in 1941 1991.
Creamer, Robert, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, 1974.
Creamer, Robert, Stengel: His Life and Times, 1984.
Crepeau, Richard, Baseball: America's Diamond Mind, 1980.
Dagavarian, Debra, Say It Ai'nt So: American Values as Revealed in Children's Baseball Stories 1880-1950, 1988.
Dennis DeValeria and Jeanne Burke DeValeria, Honus Wagner : A Biography , 1996
Dulles, Foster R., A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play, 1940.
Edwards, Bob, Fridays with Red a Radio Friendship, 1993.
Edwards, Harry, The Revolt of the Black Athlete, 1970.
Fetter, Henry D., Taking On the Yankees:Winning and Losing in the Business of Baseball, 1903-2003.
Fleming, G.H., The Unforgettable Season: 1908, 1981.*
Fountain, Charles, Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice, 1993.
Friedman, Warren, Professional Sports and Anti-Trust, 1987.*
Gerber, Felshin et. al., The American Woman in Sports.
Giglio, James N., Musial:From Stash to Stan the Man. 2001.
Gmlesh, George and J.J. Weiner, In the Ballpark : The Working Lives of Baseball People , 1999.
Goldstein, Warren, Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball, 1989.
Gould, Stephen J., Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville, 2003.
Gregorich, Barbara, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, 1993.
Guttmann, Allen, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism, 1994.
Guttmann, Allen, From Ritual to Record, 1978.
Guttmann, Allen, Sports Spectators, 1987.
Guttmann, Allen, A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports, 1988.
Guttmann, Allen, Women's Sports: A History, 1992.*
Halberstam, David, The Summer of '49, 1989.
Halberstam, David, October, 1964, 1994.
Hardy, Stephen, How Boston Played: The Growth of Recreation and Community, 1865-1917, *
Harmon, Merle, Stories. 1998.
Henderson, Robert, Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games, 1947.
Helyar, John, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball, 1994.
Higgs, Robert J., Laurel and Thorn: The Athlete in American Literature, 1981.
Higgs, Robert J., and Neil Issacs (eds.) The Sporting Spirit: Athletes in Literature and Life, 1977.
Hoberman, John M., Sport and Political Ideology, 1984.
Hoberman, John M., Darwin's Athlete: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race, 1997.
Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, 1938, 1950.
Humber, William, Diamonds of the North : A Concise History of Baseball in Canada, 1995.
Inabinett, Mark, Grantland Rice and his Heroes: The Sportswriter as Myth-Maker in the 1920s, 1994.
Jennings, Kenneth M., Balls & Strikes: The Money Game in Professional Baseball, 1990.
Kahn, Roger, The Boys of Summer, 1978.
Kahn, Roger, The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants and the Dodgers Ruled the World, 1993.*
Kelly, John R., The Recreation Business, 1985.
Kirsch, George B. The Creation of American Team Sports: Baseball and Cricket, 1838-1872, 1989.
Klein, Alan M., Sugarball: The American Game, The Domincan Dream, 1991.
Lamb, David W., Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues, 1991.
Levine, Peter, Albert Spaulding and the Rise of Baseball: the Promise of American Sport, 1984.
Levine, Peter, Ellis Island to Ebbetts Field; Sport and the American Jewish Experience, 1992.
Lowenfish, Lee and Tony Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond: The Story of Baseball's Reserve System and the Men Who Fought to Change It, 1980.
Macleod, David I., Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920, 1983.
Mandell, Richard D., Sport: A Cultural History, 1984.
Marshall, William, Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 , 1999.
Messenger, Christian, Sport and the Spirit of American Play in American Fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner, 1981.
Michener, James A., Sports in America, 1976.
Miller, James Edward, The Baseball Business: Pursuing Pennants and Profits in Baltimore, 1990.
Miller, Marvin, A Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball, 1991.
Moore, Joseph Thomas, Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby, 1988.
Mrozek, Donald J., Sport and the American Mentality: The Rise to Respectability, 1983.
Murdock, Eugene, Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball, 1982.
Nathan, Daniel, Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal. 2002
Noll, Roger, Government and the Sports Business 1984.
Oriard, Michael, Dreaming of Heroes: American Sports Fiction, 1869-1980, 1982.
Overmeyer, James, Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles
David Pietruska, Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis 1998.
Poling, Jerry, A Summer Up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball, 2002.
Rader, Benjamin, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators, 1998.
Rader, Benjamin, Baseball: A History of America's Game, 1993.
Rader, Benjamin, In Its Own Image: How Television Has Transformed Sports, 1984.
Reston, James Jr., Collision at Home Plate : The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti 1997.
Riess, Steven A., City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports, 1989.
Riess, Steve, Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, 1980.
Roberts, Randy and James Olson, Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945, 1989.
Rogosin, Don, Invisible Men: Life in Baseball's Negro Leagues, 1983.
Rosenzwig, Roy, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920, 1983.
Rossi, John P., National Game, 1999.
Ruck, Rob, Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh, 1986. *
Ruck, Rob, The Tropic of Baseball:Baseball in the Domincan Republic, 1991.
Scully, Gerald W., The Business of Major League Baseball, 1989.
Seymour, Harold, Baseball: The Early Years, 1960.
Seymour, Harold, Baseball: The Golden Age, 1971.
Seymour, Harold, Baseball: The People's Game, 1990.
Smelser, Marshall, The Life that Ruth Built, 1976.*
Smith, Curt, Voices of the Game, 1987.
Smith Ronald A., Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics, 1988.
Somers, Dale, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850-1900, 1972.*
Paul M. Sommers, (ed.), Diamonds are Forever: The Business of Baseball, 1992.
Spence, Jim, Up Close and Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television Sports, 1988. *
Staudohar, Paul, Sports Industry and Collective Barginning, 1989.
Stump, Al, Cobb, 1994.
Sullivan, Neil, The Dodgers Move West, 1987.
Sullivan, Neil, The Minors, 1990.
Thomas, Henry W., Walter Johnson : Baseball's Big Train , 1998.
Tygeil, Jules, Baseball's Great Experiment, 1983.
Tygeil, Jules, Past Time Baseball as History, 2000.
Voigt, David, American Baseball: From Gentleman's Game to the Commissioner System, 1966.
Voigt, David, American Baseball: From the Commissioner System to Continental Expansion, 1970.
Voigt, David, American Baseball: From Postwar Expansion to the Electronic Age, 1983.
Waller, Spencer W., et. al, Baseball and the American Legal Mind, 1995.
White, G. Edward, Creating the National Pastime : Baseball Transforms Itself 1903-1953, 1996
Whiting, Robert, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat: Baseball Samuria Style, 1974.
Whiting, Robert, You Gotta Have Wa, 1989.
Will, George, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, 1989.
Willett, Peter, The Classic Racehorse, 1981.
Yabolonsky, Lewis and Jonathan Brown, The Little League Game: How Kids, Coaches, and Pa Parents Play It, 1979.
Yardley, Jonathan, Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner, 1977.
Zang, David W., Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer, 1995. *
Zimbalist, Andrew, Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime 1992.
Zingg, Paul J., Harry Hooper: An American Baseball Life 1993.
This page was last updated
March 31, 2005
Background image, an oldtimer (George Herman Ruth) takes his cuts, during the 1940s.Photo provided by William R. Conroy.