Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin

A photographic tribute to how ballplayers got their start with memories from Nolan Ryan, Hank Aaron, Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Vladimir Guerrero, and more. With an Introduction by Cal Ripken, Jr. and an Afterword by Johnny Bench

In Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin, photographer Jean Fruth features more than 250 of the best images from all levels of the amateur game in various US cities, as well as several hotbeds of baseball around the world.

Each chapter opens with a portrait of a baseball legend and a first-person essay recounting his early memories of playing the game. Some of the stars highlighted in this full-color book include Whitey Ford, Vladimir Guerrero, Hank Aaron, Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, and Ichiro Suzuki.

The pages that follow in each chapter document the game from sandlots to big-time ballparks, and at every level of organized baseball, giving readers a window into how these legends' careers began. With an introduction by Cal Ripken, Jr., a foreword by Steve Wulf, and an afterword by Johnny Bench, this book makes the perfect gift for baseball fans of all teams.

Jean Fruth has been a photographer for nearly two decades and shooting baseball for the past 15 years. She covered the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s, before turning her attention to the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, where she helped to build the museum’s profile and photo archive. Today, Fruth is the traveling photographer for La Vida Baseball, a digital media company and Hall of Fame partner that tells the story of Latino baseball across the United States and Latin America. She is recognized by Sony as one of its 45 Sony Artisans of Imagery, world-wide.