Taken for granted by fans today, Sunday baseball was made possible only after decades of contention between evangelical Sabbatarians seeking enforcement of antiquated “blue laws,” and an alliance of “Pro-Sabs” who prevailed against them with strategy and tenacity. At the heart of the struggle was a debate over the First Amendment and the place of religion in public life.
Drawing on case records, this book details the legal and political battles and describes the roles of the judges, law enforcement officers and politicians, and the ordinary citizens who wanted to enjoy baseball on Sunday. The contributions of unheralded civil rights pioneers—such as Joe Neet, John Powell and Lewis Perrine—are documented.

Arthur G. Sharp is a Sun City Center, Florida-based writer/editor whose publications include 21 books and more than 2,500 articles on a variety of topics.

Arthur G. Sharp
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages:
Bibliographic Info: ca. 55 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9274-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5022-7
Imprint: McFarland

“Sharp vividly depicts the profound struggle between ordinary citizens desiring to watch or play a Sunday ball game on their only day off in the once-standard six-day workweek and religious dogmatists seeking to control people’s lives under the fig leaf of a state-mandated compulsory day of rest. Through extensive use of contemporaneous newspaper accounts, Sharp richly details the tensions of a civil-rights quarrel for individual choice to pursue secular activities on Sunday without governmental interference in numerous small cities with baseball teams at the amateur, semi-pro, and minor-league levels. This book is a fascinating exploration of the on-the-ground activities conducted over several decades with regard to restrictive laws prohibiting Sunday baseball, which adds significant color to the existing legislative and judicial accounts by historians that have focused largely on cities with major-league teams.”—Charlie Bevis, author of Sunday Baseball: The Major Leagues’ Struggle to Play Baseball on the Lord’s Day, 1876-1934