Past Time

In his introduction to Past Time, Jules Tygiel states that this collection of essays is about American history and should not be mistaken for a book about baseball. His focus is not the game on the field, but rather the broader baseball experience: how fans received and processed their baseball information; how they witnessed the games; what baseball symbolized in different eras; and how each generation reinvented the national pastime to fit its own material reality and ideological perceptions. In nine chapters (which he calls innings) Ty -giel presents an engaging and thoughtful interpretation of many aspects of the social and cultural history of the national pastime. While the book neglects the theme of nationalism, it is exceptionally strong on the issues of statistics, race relations, the role of the media, and the geographical expansion of the sport. Tygiel's first three chapters concentrate on the origins and early growth of the game in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The initial essay, on the rise of modern baseball in the 1850s and 1860s, is brief and superficial on the key elements of the “New York game” and how and why it defeated rival forms of ball play (including cricket) to become the dominant team sport in the United States by 1865. The book picks up steam with an insightful analysis of the role of Henry Chad-wick as an early reformer and crusader against gambling and alcohol and especially as the inventor of baseball's “historical essence” via his creation of the box score and baseball statistics. The next piece compares the American dream success stories of four men who played vital parts in the evolution of the sport during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Charles Comiskey, Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Clark Griffith

Cricket · Ideology · Interpretation (philosophy · Media studies · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theme (computing · American History and Culture · American Sports and Literature · History · Law · Sports, Gender, and Society