Download PDF Baseball before We Knew It A Search for the Roots of the Game David Block Tim Wiles 9780803262553 Books

Product details Paperback 352 pages Publisher Bison Books; 1 edition (March 1, 2006) Language English ISBN-10 0803262558

Baseball before We Knew It A Search for the Roots of the Game David Block Tim Wiles 9780803262553 Books Reviews

• .......... into the possible, plausible, even probable roots of a game which undoubtedly evolved from a series of like-spirited regional variations, most of which evolved parallel to, but geographically isolated from and largely unobservant of the rules of, one another.
  Reflective of my rural background, I like my sports played on real grass and dirt, or on courts in industrial precincts; rather than on synthetic "grass", watched by spectators on plastic seats inside concrete, steel and glass monstrosities.
  Though not a dedicated baseball fan (I'm Australian) this work to me is redolent of a period when sports were a bucolic and regional pastime rather than a global industry. This type of work raises, to me, the "what if's" -- back when a lot of games had similarities; why did this or that discipline develop in "this" direction instead of "that".
  Thus, it's for me!
• If you're a baseball fan in the sense that you've played the game your whole life, you've been interested in different aspects of the game all your life, and you feel that, somehow, baseball is in your blood -- then you must read this book. I won't repeat the points that others have made in giving this book its so-rightly-due five-star reviews this well-researched and well-docoumented work is ground-breaking. What it shows is that baseball is in your blood, my blood, our blood because its roots go way, way, WAY back. Quite possibly thousands of years back. As Jim Bouton wrote in another context, it's not we who have the hold on a baseball it's baseball that has a hold on us. A long, powerful, historic hold. If this book doesn't make your spine tingle, nothing will.
• The author seems to be primarily engaged in trying to debunk three myths (1) that Gen. Abner Doubleday invented the game, (2) that the real inventor was Alexander J. Cartwright of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, and (3) that the game developed from the English game of rounders.
  
  For the first, there has already been so much evidence that Doubleday had nothing in particular to do with baseball, so it would seem there was little more that could be said, except that, in fact, the author finds out some interesting evidence that he believes to be the main reason that A. G. Spalding might have favored Doubleday's claim-- that Spalding and Doubleday were both adherents of the same religious cult!
  
  Regarding the Cartwright claim, the author has much less to say. He accepts that the Knickerbocker Rules were an important step in the development of baseball, but in addition he states that there is evidence that Cartwright's role in developing those rules was less significant than has been believed. And he shows that organized baseball games occured before the adoption of the Knickerbocker Rules.
  
  It is in debunking the third "myth," I think, where the author strains to do something undeserved. So the name "rounders" does not seem to have been used prior to the nineteenth century. But the author admits that "rounders" was simply a name that has come to be assigned to an earlier English game, and that baseball developed from that game. The difference between that and the "myth" he is trying to debunk is minimal. If you really think it makes a difference between saying "baseball developed from rounders" and "baseball evolved from a number of games, but the most important was the game now known in England as 'rounders,'" you can accept this book's argument. I don't see it that way; to me "developed from rounders" and "developed from the game now known as rounders" are not significantly different.
  
  But the book is interesting. It should be in your possession if you're interested in baseball, and especially in its history.
• An incredible book that looks at the very roots of baseball and finds that it stretches back much farther than what I was taught in school. I learned the myth of Doubleday and this book not only debunks that myth but also puts forward a convincing alternative that baseball had essentially evolved from the dawn of mankind.
  
  A ton of interesting tidbits too, and I love the imagery of bored Revolutionary War soldiers playing baseball during their war's Groundhog Days
• Well researched book for serious baseball history fans. Definitely is focused on the ancient and early roots of baseball, rather than early baseball as we know it.
• Gave this book to my nephew, who is a cerebral baseball nut (he's also a baseball player). He thinks it's a great book. From my point of view, it seems well-researched and -documented; I just flipped thru a few pages bcs I didn't want to "break" the binding. mb
• I found this book quite interesting, the subject is well documented and the facts are clear and understandable. The roots of baseball are many, and Block did a fine job of exploring all of them. I did enjoy the many drawings and manuscripts enclosed.
  
  If you really are a student of the game and it's roots, this is a book you cannot ignore.
• Great book!