Baseball in Baltimore; The First 100 Years

Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. ix, [1], 242, [4] pages. Illustrations. Suggested Reading. Index. Minor stain inside front cover and on front DJ flap. Minor sticker residue on back of DJ. The author was a A graduate of Haverford College in 1939. He wrote for the Baltimore Evening Sun for over 50 years. He was one of the first members of the Society for American Baseball Research. This work is packed with rare illustrations, colorful anecdotes, and fascinating details many of them skillfully brought to life from the original box scores on preserved newspaper pages and scorecards Baseball in Baltimore tells a story that will captivate baseball fans everywhere. Among the highlights: Baseball in Baltimore is enriched by 150 rare illustrations. They show the Orioles of 1885, in pin-striped splendor; former players Ned Hanlon, Steve Brodie, and others, inspecting the new Municipal Stadium in 1922; Wee Willie Keeler laying down a bunt; the legendary Wilbert Robinson, mask and mitt in hand; the minor-league Orioles raising the flag on Opening Day, 1910; Lefty Grove on the mound; Roy Campanella, a teenaged regular; Babe Ruth tending bar with his father in 1915; and the big parade of 1954, when major league baseball at last returned to Baltimore. The teams were the Marylands and Terrapins, the Drydocks and Pastimes, the Black Sox, the Elite Giants, and, of course, the Orioles. Players had names like Wee Willie Keeler and John McGraw, Babe Ruth and Lefty Grove, Roy Campanella, and Satchell Paige. In Baseball in Baltimore: The First Hundred Years, Bready presents a vivid and compelling portrait of the players, the managers, the ballparks, and the games that shaped the history of the national pastime in one of America's oldest baseball towns. It was 1859 when the game of baseball came to Baltimore, as George F. Beam's Excelsiors played their first games at Flat Rock in Druid Hill Park. In the century that followed, Baltimore had franchises in eight different professional leagues and games were played in nine city parks from the Madison Avenue Grounds to Union Park, from old Oriole Park to Bugle Field. Bready also revisits the International League teams of the first half of the twentieth century. He also describes the teams Baltimore fielded in the old Negro leagues the Black Sox and Elite Giants whose patrons, in fairly intimate surroundings, saw some of the finest players the game has ever produced. The players make this book a joy to read.