Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game

by George Vecsey Narrated by Alan Nebelthau

Overview

Best-selling author George Vecsey is an esteemed and award-winning sports journalist for the New York Times. In Baseball, he recounts the history of America's national pastime. Baseball has been around in various forms for thousands of years, but within the last 200 years it has become an American institution. Growing from a sport played in open fields and in big city streets, baseball has seen its share of innovators and detractors, heroes and villains. Vecsey details them all from the scandalous Black Sox of 1919 and modern steroid abusers to icons like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and the countless underdogs that came out of nowhere to capture the imaginations of fans everywhere. As with each Modern Library Chronicle, Vecsey's Baseball is a concise history filled with details and stories that will appeal to rookie and veteran fans alike. Narrator Alan Nebelthau's warm voice punctuates all of the wit and charm of Vecsey's prose. Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game is an invitation to [Vecsey's] house for Sunday dinner. The pace is more relaxed, the meal much larger, the result as wonderful as you suspected it would be.-Leigh Montville

Editorial Reviews

Baseball is a storyteller's game. Its pace and steadily building suspense seem designed for artful recollection; it's no wonder that the diamond sport has attracted wordsmiths like Roger Angell, David Halberstam, and George Vecsey, the author of this book. In this Modern Library Chronicles book, the New York Times sports columnist writes about the long, majestic history of our National Pastime. As always, his writing is relaxed, exact, and graceful, sure proof of his affection for a great game.

Publishers Weekly

New York Times sports columnist Vecsey (Year in the Sun) devotes himself to this sprightly history of the national pastime. His survey unfolds much like a highlights tape, with a breezy background narrative of the game from its pre-Civil War roots to its current drug scandals, structured around set pieces spotlighting the outsized deeds of luminaries like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey and George Steinbrenner. He finds plenty of time for color commentary, like an appreciation of radio announcers' whimsical homerun catch-phrases (" `Get up Aunt Minnie and raise the window!' " Pirates voice Rosey Roswell was wont to yell), cantankerous opinionating ("Trying to be fair and neutral about it, I can only say that the designated hitter rule is a travesty and ought to be tossed out") and ruminations on the ultimate metaphysical question of "why the Yankees exist." Throughout, the author stresses the game's continuities: modern-day anxieties about free agentry, labor strife and the bereavement of cities abandoned by their teams for greener pastures have plagued baseball from the beginning. Vivid, affectionate and clear-eyed, Vecsey's account makes for an engaging sports history. (Aug. 15) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

JUN/JUL 07 - AudioFile

It’s a bit surprising that anyone would come out with a new history of baseball—after all, is there anything new to say? Indeed, Vecsey’s brief narrative is simply a brief synthesis of other people’s histories. What sets this audiobook apart is his personal connection to the game. Vecsey grew up watching the Brooklyn Dodgers in the era of Jackie Robinson, and he relates these stories with nostalgia, and with only a little regret that the game ain’t what it used to be. Alan Nebelthau does a mostly good job of capturing this tone, which evokes a wise old guy sitting next to you in the bleachers, though at times you sense he doesn’t quite get Vecsey’s sense of humor. D.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170968886
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	01/15/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I SIX DEGREES
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Baseball"
by .
Copyright © 2008 George Vecsey.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos