The subtitle of this book is, “U.S. History Through Baseball”. And that is indeed what this book describes. Each chapter starts with a few paragraphs about a short period of U. S. history, and the rest of the chapter talks about baseball history during that same time span. I had not realized it before, but baseball really does reflect our shared history, both the good and bad parts. Both authors teach history at the college level, and the first few paragraphs do read a little like a history book, but much abridged. And they do refer back to their brief US history lesson in the rest of the chapter discussing baseball.
While I am not a baseball fanatic, I do know a few baseball factoids. Having lived in Boston for a decade, I had definitely heard of the “Curse of the Bambino”, for example. But there were a lot of interesting details that I had never heard before, especially in the chapters about the early years of the game. All of the maneuvering between the team owners regarding players’ salaries and contracts for example. I knew about contemporary stories, but the issue goes back to the early days of the leagues. And even the league structure was more complex than I realized. And there are quite a few mentions of players that were important to the game at the time, whose names are much more obscure now.
One thing I had never considered before is the impact baseball has had on the country, beyond the major leagues. The minor leagues would have been even more likely to impact our ancestors, since more teams were involved, and they were in a wider variety of places. Which means there were more slots for players in the minor leagues. Then there was the question of whether the athletes should be “playing” at all during a World War. And the importance of baseball during the Great Depression. While current events have always impacted baseball, you can see some instances where baseball impacted the larger society. Breaking the color barrier is the first thing that comes to mind in the second category.
If this was your family, how would you research them? One thing you can definitely learn is if your ancestors lived in a city that had a major, or minor, league team. And there were some in the past that were in cities where there is not a team today. Would they have gone to games? No way to know for sure, but it’s interesting to know they might have had the opportunity. Did any of your family ever play professional baseball? There is of course the National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/, and the Official Site of Minor League Baseball, https://www.milb.com/, not to mention the Negro League Museum, https://www.nlbm.com/. You can find information about the various teams on Wikipedia. But if you think you had an ancestor who played, but didn’t win any awards, newspaper research for that time frame may be the best way to find him on his team’s roster.