Baseball Yesterday and Today

Baseball's yesterdays add up to more than a list of statistics and records. This is America's game, and in its distant images and shining moments we find something of ourselves-the national past in the national pastime. That past - from its origins as a pastoral game in open country fields to the meeting of historic rivals in historic venues televised across the world - comes alive here in the light of baseball as we know it today.



Side-by-side imagery and stories show readers the game as it is, and as it was, how it has changed, and how, in many ways, it remains forever the same. Vintage photographs and memorabilia set beside modern color action shots illustrate baseball yesterday and today-from the look of a typical major leaguer to the architecture of the ballpark, from the equipment and facilities over the generations to the fan's experience at the game. Informative captions by noted baseball writer and editor Josh Leventhal help tell the story of how the game has changed, and remained the same, over the decades.

Josh Leventhal has been an avid baseball fan for as long as he can remember, reading baseball stories and pouring over statistics in the Baseball Encyclopedia. He has written or compiled six books, including the best-selling Take Me Out to the Ballpark, Baseball...The Perfect Game, Baseball and the Meaning of Life, and The World Series: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fall Classic, now in its fourth edition. A native New Yorker, he cheers for the Minnesota Twins in his adopted hometown of the Twin Cities, although the Pittsburgh Pirates will always remain dearest in his heart. He is an editor at Voyageur Press and lives in St. Paul.