Baseball in the Garden of Eden by John Thorn

Baseball in the Garden of Eden by John Thorn

Now available in paperback, the fresh and fascinating (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), splendid and brilliant (Philadelphia Daily News) history of the early game by the Official Historian of Major League Baseball.

Who really invented baseball? Forget Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown and Alexander Cartwright. Meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and other fascinating figures buried beneath the falsehoods that have accrued around baseball's origins. This is the true story of how organized baseball started, how gambling shaped the game from its earliest days, and how it became our national pastime and our national mirror.

Baseball in the Garden of Eden draws on original research to tell how the game evolved from other bat-and-ball games and gradually supplanted them, how the New York game came to dominate other variants, and how gambling and secret professionalism promoted and plagued the game. From a religious society's plot to anoint Abner Doubleday as baseball's progenitor to a set of scoundrels and scandals far more pervasive than the Black Sox Fix of 1919, this entertaining book is full of surprises. Even the most expert baseball fan will learn something new with almost every page.

SABR is the Society for American Baseball Research, a group of over 6,000 enthusiasts about the game of baseball whose research interests range from the game's history to statistical analysis, records, cultural impact, and more. The BioProject is a SABR effort to research, write, and publish biographies of every player--and every person--ever connected with organized baseball. Anyone with a love of baseball can join SABR and become a part of these efforts. John Thorn is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, an honor that reflects his incomparable contributions to baseball history. In partnership with Pete Palmer, he created The Hidden Game of Baseball and Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, not only a complete record of the game's statistical history, but one that included sabermetric analysis. Thorn served as senior creative consultant to Ken Burns's Baseball, and in 2011, he published Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, tracing baseball's American origins back to the 18th century.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780743294034
ISBN 10	0743294033
Title	Baseball in the Garden of Eden
Author	John Thorn
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Simon And Schuster
Year published	2011-03-29
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.