Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World Series

Masur, Louis P.

ISBN 10: 0809016362 / ISBN 13: 9780809016365

Published by Hill and Wang, 2004

About this Item

Fast Free Shipping â Very Good condition book with a firm cover and clean pages. Shows normal use and some light wear or limited notes markings. A solid, nice copy to enjoy.

Seller Inventory # GWV.0809016362.VG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World Series
• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809016362
• ISBN 13: 9780809016365
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

A suspenseful account of the glorious days more than a century ago when our national madness began, the first Major League Baseball World Series.

A post-season series of games to establish supremacy in the major leagues was not inevitable in the baseball world. But in 1903 the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates (in the well-established National League) challenged the Boston Americans (in the upstart American League) to a play-off, which he was sure his team would win. They didn't--and that wasn't the only surprise during what became the first World Series. In Autumn Glory, Louis P. Masur tells the riveting story of two agonizing weeks in which the stars blew it, unknown players stole the show, hysterical fans got into the act, and umpires had to hold on for dear life.

Before and even during the 1903 season, it had seemed that baseball might succumb to the forces that had been splintering the sport for decades: owners' greed, players' rowdyism, fans' unrest. Yet baseball prevailed, and Masur tells the equally dramatic story of how it did so, in a country preoccupied with labor strife and big-business ruthlessness, and anxious about the welfare of those crowding into cities such as Pittsburgh and Boston (which in themselves offered competing versions of the American dream).

His colorful history of how the first World Series consolidated baseball's hold on the American imagination makes us see what one sportswriter meant when he wrote at the time, Baseball is the melting pot at a boil, the most democratic sport in the world. All in all, Masur believes, it still is.

About the Author

Louis P . Masur is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values at Trinity College in Hartford. Married with two children, he divides his time between Hartford and Highland Park, New Jersey. His previous books include The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America, 1831: Year of Eclipse, and Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World Series.