Search results for ""author john thorn""
David R. Godine Publisher Inc How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
The fascinating, true, story of baseball’s amateur origins. “Explores the conditions and factors that begat the game in the 19th century and turned it into the national pastime....A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat.”—Paul Dickson, The Wall Street JournalBaseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs — ordinary people — who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses and fought against the South in the Civil War.But that’s not the way the story has been told. The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. You have read that baseball’s color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You have been told that the clean, corporate 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball’s first professional club. Not true. They weren’t the first professionals; they weren’t all that clean, either. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball’s first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics—and modern pitching.Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren’t invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn’t part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall.When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseball’s amazing amateurs had already done that.Thomas W. Gilbert’s history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by history, American culture, and how great things began.
£20.99
David R. Godine Publisher Inc How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed
The fascinating, true, story of baseball’s amateur origins. “Explores the conditions and factors that begat the game in the 19th century and turned it into the national pastime....A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat.”—Paul Dickson, The Wall Street JournalBaseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs — ordinary people — who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses and fought against the South in the Civil War.But that’s not the way the story has been told. The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. You have read that baseball’s color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You have been told that the clean, corporate 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball’s first professional club. Not true. They weren’t the first professionals; they weren’t all that clean, either. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball’s first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics—and modern pitching.Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren’t invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn’t part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall.When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseball’s amazing amateurs had already done that.Thomas W. Gilbert’s history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by history, American culture, and how great things began.
£13.99
The University of Chicago Press The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics
Long before Moneyball became a sensation, or Nate Silver turned the knowledge he'd honed on baseball into electoral gold, John Thorn and Pete Palmer were using statistics to shake the foundations of the game. First published in 1984, The Hidden Game of Baseball ushered in the sabermetric revolution by demonstrating that we were thinking about baseball stats - and thus the game itself - all wrong. Instead of praising sluggers for gaudy RBI totals or pitchers for wins, Thorn and Palmer argued in favor of more subtle measurements that correlated much more closely to the ultimate goal: winning baseball games. The new gospel promulgated by Thorn and Palmer opened the door for a flood of new questions, such as how a ballpark's layout helps or hinders offense or whether a strikeout really is worse than another kind of out. Taking questions like these seriously - and backing up the answers with data-launched a new era, showing fans, journalists, scouts, executives, and even players themselves a new, better way to look at the game. This brand-new edition retains the original, while adding a new introduction by the authors tracing the book's influence. A foreword by ESPN's lead baseball analyst, Keith Law, details the book's central role in the transformation of baseball coverage and team management. Thirty years after its original publication, The Hidden Game is still bringing the high heat - a true classic of baseball literature.
£19.89