Baseball's spread across Illinois paralleled the sport's explosive growth in other parts of the country.Robert D. Sampson taps a wealth of archival research to transport readers to an era when an epidemic of "base ball on the brain" raged from Alton to Woodstock. Focusing on the years 1865 to 1869, Sampson offers a vivid portrait of a game where local teams and civic ambition went hand in hand and teams of paid professionals displaced gentlemen's clubs devoted to sporting fair play. This preoccupation with competition sparked rules disputes and controversies over imported players while the game itself mirrored society by excluding Black Americans and women. The new era nonetheless brought out paying crowds to watch the Rock Island Lively Turtles, Fairfield Snails, and other teams take the field up and down the state.
A first-ever history of early baseball in Illinois, Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins adds the Prairie State game's unique shadings and colorful stories to the history of the national pastime.
|AcknowledgmentsPrologue A Dying Ember
First Inning Baseball Fever and Pioneers
Second Inning Organizing Clubs, Funding, Travel, and the Game's Rituals
Third Inning Playing Fields, Gambling, and Injuries
Fourth Inning The Game and Its Players
Fifth Inning Sharing the Fun
Sixth Inning Barriers of Race and Gender
Seventh Inning Trouble in Baseball's Eden
Eighth Inning Representative Teams
Ninth Inning The Thrill Departs
Epilogue Ghosts
Appendix A Illinois Baseball Teams, 1865-70
Appendix B Bloomington's Fifth Ward School-Grounds Neighborhood
Appendix C Illinois Baseball Players, 1865-70
Notes
Bibliography
Index
|"Highly entertaining with useful appendices." —Spitball Magazine"Provides a wealth of detail about the origins of the Illinois game and the teams who played it from Chicago down south to Cairo and nearly every town in between." —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A delightful collection of history and baseball anecdotes for both casual and serious baseball fans." —Illinois Times
|Robert D. Sampson is the editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and the author of John L. O'Sullivan and His Times.