Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 2008)

BACK ISSUE
This is a single back issue only. To order a current subscription, or for more information, please visit the journal’s web page at https://mcfarlandbooks.com/imprint/base-ball-new-research-on-the-early-game/.  Print copies of back issues from volumes 1-6 are available for $29.95.

John Thorn is the author of countless articles on baseball history and has written, co-written, and edited dozens of baseball books, including The Hidden Game of Baseball, Total Baseball, and The Armchair Book of Baseball. He was founding editor of The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History and founding publisher of Total Sports Publishing in 1998. Thorn writes “Play,” a regular column for the VOICES, the semiannual publication of the New York Folklore Society, and appears irregularly in the Boston Globe, New York Times and NYTBR. He serves as a publishing and curatorial consultant to the Museum of the City of New York, with whom he created the recently published coffee-table book New York 400.

Edited by John Thorn

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 124
Bibliographic Info:
Copyright Date: 2008
ISSN:
Imprint: McFarland

Editor’s Note      3

Was the 1891 National League Pennant Thrown?
Charles C. Alexander      5
“A Motion as Near Flying as Any Human Being Could Attain”: The 19th Century Umpire as Sprinter
Peter Morris      18
“Old Fashioned Base Ball” in Western New York, 1825–1860
Priscilla Astifan and Larry McCray      26
The Cincinnati Game: Townball in Cincinnati, 1858–1866
Greg Perkins      35
The Ward v. Johnson Libel Case: The Last Battle of the Great Baseball War
William F. Lamb      47
The Athletic and National Clubs and the Early National League
Richard Hershberger      63
Bizarre Base Ball Bats
Robert H. Schaefer      75
“College Boys and Boozers”: Vermont’s Northern League and William Clarence Matthews
Karl Lindholm      83
The Magnolia, the Knickerbocker, and the Age of Flash
John Thorn      100

Reviews
Paul Adomites reviews BILL FELBER’S A Game of Brawl      116
Rob Edelman reviews RING W. LARDNER’S You Know Me Al      117
Andrew Zimbalist reviews WARREN WILBERT’S The Arrival of the American League      119
Jim Frutchey reviews TOM SWIFT’S Chief Bender’s Burden      121

• “One of the more compelling sports-related publications to come along in a great while…unostentatious, solid, and a great read”—Library Journal
• “The journal both embodies recent trends and provides a forum for expanding upon them. Base Ball thus represents an exciting and important contribution to literature on the sport. John Thorn, a respected historian of early baseball history, is the journal’s editor and Base Ball has a first-rate editorial board and, as a result, already appears poised to be among the finest journals dedicated to the history of sports”—Arete
• “never comes up short in the quality of its content. In addition to the fine research articles there is a valuable section of book reviews, mostly dedicated to books pertaining to 19th century baseball”—Nineteenth Century Notes
• “An exciting and important contribution to literature on the sport…seeks to chronicle, analyze, and expand our understanding of the game during its long, and seemingly getting longer, pre 1920 phase”—Society for American Baseball Research Bibliography Committee Newsletter.