From the first Black amateur players before the Civil War through to the last barnstorming Negro League teams in the 1960s, here is the complete and utterly fascinating history of segregated baseball in the United States. Thanks to photographs of the major players and many first-hand accounts, baseball fans will get the full story of this tumultuous time, behind the scenes and out in the ballparks. Every detail is revealed, starting with that sad day in 1911 when the governing body of the National Association of Baseball Players voted unanimously to bar any club that signed an African-American. Meet the many players, including George Stovey, Sol White, and Welday Walker, who blazed the way for Jackie Robinson to integrate major league baseball in 1947. Feel the frustration felt by the players when they were denied hotel rooms and restaurant service while on the road. Every image and tale also conveys the joy of the game and the pride these men felt in playing professional baseball.

Presents a comprehensive guide to coaching baseball with contributions from twenty-seven coaches who share their secrets to winning; and offers advice on building and managing a program, practice sessions, team strategies, player motivation and leadership, and making baseball fun.

Readers can get inside the minds of the stars of the diamond in this extraordinary tour of brain power, psyche, and sheer will of Major League players. 20 illustrations.

Professional baseball was introduced to Chattanooga in the summer of 1885, and the Lookouts moniker and legacy dates to 1909. Baseball in Chattanooga presents the shapers of the franchise, most notably Joe Engel, and the players who found success, glory, and even infamy in Chattanooga. These players, including Harmon Killebrew, Mark Langston, and Gil Coan, represented the Lookouts in two ballparks that had one thing in common: watching baseball there made it easy to love the game.

Baseball is played in all corners of the world, so it is no surprise to learn that some of the greatest hardballers of all time never played on a U.S. major league diamond. Who knows what major league records would have been shattered had Sadaharu Oh of Japan, Josh Gibson of the Negro Leagues, Martin Dihigo of Cuba, Francisco Coimbre of Puerto Rico and Hector Espino of Mexico played in the United States. This work is a survey of the greatest baseball players who never played in the U.S. major leagues. The greatest players from the various professional leagues outside organized baseball in the United States are reviewed, and all-star teams are selected for each league. Finally, the author selects an "all-world all-star team" from the individual all-star teams from Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Negro Leagues.

Though Venezuela is sandwiched between two soccer-mad countries Brazil and Colombia baseball is its national pastime and passion. Yet until the late 1980s few professional teams actively scouted and developed players there. This book is about the man who changed all that and brought Venezuela into Major League Baseball in a major way. While other teams were looking to the Dominican Republic for new talent, Houston Astros' scout Andrés Reiner saw an untapped niche in Venezuela. Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom recounts how, over the next fifteen years, Reiner signed nearly one hundred players, nineteen of whom reached the majors. The stories of these players among them Bobby Abreu, Johán Santana, Melvin Mora, Carlos Guillén, and Freddy García are interwoven with Reiner s own, together creating a fascinating portrait of a curious character in the annals of sports and a richly textured picture of the opening of Venezuela as baseball s new frontier. Countless interviews broaden and deepen the story s insights into how the scouting system works, how Reiner worked within it, and how his efforts have affected the sport of baseball in Venezuela and the significance of Venezuela in the world of Major League Baseball.

It has been more than half a century since Springfield last hosted minor league baseball. That draught will end at downtown's newly constructed Hammons Field in the spring of 2005, when the Springfield Cardinals of the AA Texas League bring professional baseball back to the Queen City of the Ozarks. The new team will have quite a legacy to fulfill, as the Springfield Cardinals of the Western Association won several pennants those many years ago, and brought to town such legendary baseball names as Branch Rickey, Joe Garagiola, and Stan Musial. Before the Cardinals came teams like the Midgets, Reds, and Merchants, and a rich tradition of professional and semi-pro baseball dating back to the mid-1880s. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources and complimented by over 100 vintage images, Baseball in Springfield is must-have for those ready to discover the historic connection this city has to the national pastime.