Baseball as It Was - by John E Ferling (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Historian John Ferling delves into baseball in the fascinating dozen years following World War II, when baseball ruled as the national pastime, and the names of the game's principal stars were known even by those who weren't fans of the sport. Major league baseball integration in 1947 also ushered in a pivotal transition, and within a decade only one team did not have a Black player on its roster. Portraits and stories of the performances of several Hall of Fame players are also chronicled, including Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, and Henry Aaron among many others. It is the story of dramatic pennant races, late season collapses, epic performances, successful and unsuccessful managers, even an insurrection by players on the 1949 Boston Braves. While Baseball As It Was examines the game in this period, its cornerstone is an exploration of how teams were assembled in the era before free agency. The book zeroes in on the Cleveland Indians and the Boston/Milwaukee Braves between 1946 and 1957.

Review Quotes

"You can't truly call yourself a baseball fan without understanding the zeitgeist and significance of the Major League game played in the 10 seasons after World War II. And you can't truly understand that era without reading John Ferling's engaging contribution to the literate chronicle of baseball history."

--BILL PENNINGTON, The New York Times and author of The New York Times best-seller, Billy Martin: Baseball's Flawed Genius

"In Baseball As It Was, a prolific American historian recounts the efforts of two perennial losing teams to rise to top of their leagues in the sport's glory days when baseball dominated popular culture. A nostalgic tour de force by a baseball fan for baseball fans."

--EDWARD J. LARSON, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters

"Nostalgia has been called 'the rust of memory, ' and John Ferling properly avoids it in this informative and entertaining stroll through baseball's tumultuous first post-1945 decades. He shows that the game's path to the present began with problems of competitive imbalance, and the pluck and gallantry of teams that surmounted them."

--GEORGE WILL, The Washington Post

"Original, deftly crafted, and a seminal, groundbreaking study of meticulous research, Baseball As It Was: Building Champions Before Free Agency Changed Everything by John Ferling is a truly extraordinary, impressively informative, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library American Sports History/Baseball collections and supplemental curriculum studies list."

--JIM COX, Midwest Book Review

"This book is a work of art. It's like a pointillist painting with thousands of tiny details, all skillfully worked into a colorful portrait of two less-studied teams in a pivotal era of baseball history."

--JUDITH TESTA, Author of Sal Maglie: Baseball's Demon Barber

"John Ferling's meticulously researched book brings us back to an almost Homeric age in baseball, when ball clubs were built and not bought and when pioneering general managers had guts and brains instead of analytics. Baseball As It Was is for passionate fans, written by a passionate yet clear-eyed author."

--TOM CLAVIN, Author of The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend

About the Author

John Ferling is a leading authority on late 18th and early 19th century American history and professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of sixteen previous books, mostly on the American Revolution, including Shots Heard Round the World, Almost a Miracle, Independence, The Ascent of George Washington, and Setting the World Ablaze. He is also a life-long baseball fan. To learn more, please visit his website: www.johnferling.com.