For more than five decades, pioneering researcher Dorothy Seymour Mills has studied and written about baseball’s past. With this groundbreaking book, she turns her attention to the historians, stat hounds, and many thousands of not-so-casual fans whose fascination with the game and its history, like her own, defies easy explanation. As Mills demonstrates, baseball elicits a passion—and inspires a slightly off-kilter, obsessive behavior—that is only slightly less interesting than the people who indulge it.

The late Dorothy Seymour Mills was the author of 24 books. The first female historian in the Society for American Baseball Research, she was a member of the Association for Women in Sports Media and lived in Tucson, Arizona. Visit her website at www.dorothyjanemills.com.

Dorothy Seymour Mills
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 266
Bibliographic Info: 13 photos, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4289-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5588-1
Imprint: McFarland

Foreword by Richard C. Crepeau       1
Preface       5

PART ONE. A MANLY PURSUIT
1. Our National Game      11
2. The Amateur Spirit      22
3. Our Heroes      36
4. The Pantheon      48
5. Go Figure      64
6. Is Baseball the God Game?      81
7. Baseball and Our Other National Sport: Business      94
8. Brakes on Our Pursuit      109

PART TWO. A WOMANLY PURSUIT
9. Can Women Be Baseball Stars?      131
10. Girls and Women Who Excelled      144
11. Girls Are Children, Too      157
12. The Courage of Baseball Women      173
13. What Baseball Discrimination Is Like      186
14. Women Fans Follow Their Passion      200
15. Baseball Women of the Future      216

Conclusion      228
Bibliography      231
Index      249

• A Library Journal Starred Review
• “A fascinating read that will be especially inspiring for women who love the game”—Library Journal
• “Each chapter is fascinating and demonstrates beyond any doubt that Harold Seymour left a great deal more behind than his books. Mills was Seymour’s passionate partner, and she continues holding the flame. Eccentric? Yes. Worth reading? Yes. Recommended”—Choice
• “A fascinating read that will be especially inspiring for women who love the game”—SABR
• “If you are a baseball fan, then this is a book for your shelf”—The Inside Game (SABR Deadball Era Committee Newsletter)
• “A provocative chronicle of the ever-changing game of baseball”—Nine
• “Fascinating”—girlsplaybaseball.wordpress.com
• “A worthwhile purchase for those whose passion for the game extends beyond that of the casual fan”—Daily Bulletin
• “Delightful”—Ken Fenster, professor of history, Georgia Perimeter College
• “Dorothy Seymour Mills has hit a home run again…. Written in two parts, ‘A Manly Pursuit’ and ‘A Womanly Pursuit,’ [the book] explains why baseball holds a fascination for many people of both genders—and for both the young and young at heart. A must read for those who want to understand this aspect of our American culture.”—Monica Nucciarone, author of Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Legend
• “One of the most informative and accurate books I have ever read. All baseball fans and front-office employees should read Chasing Baseball”—Hall of Famer Bob Feller
• “My opinion is that everyone who calls themselves an American baseball fan should read [this book]”—Joan M. Thomas, author of Baseball’s First Lady: Helene Hathaway Robison Britton and the St. Louis Cardinals