Baseball As It Was: Building Champions Before Free Agency Changed Everything

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.

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.