Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years

by Steven P. Gietschier Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

Overview

Baseball explores the history of organized baseball during the mid-twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures-among them Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Hank Greenberg, and Ford Frick-whose stories figure prominently in baseball's past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness.



Combining narrative and analysis, Gietschier tells the game's history while simultaneously exploring its politics and economics, including how the game confronted and barely survived the US's entry into World War II; how owners controlled the players; and how the business of baseball interacted with the federal government. He reveals how baseball handled the return to peacetime and the defining postwar decade, including the integration of the game, the demise of the Negro Leagues, the emergence of television, and the first efforts to expand into new markets. Gietschier considers much of the work done by biographers, scholars, and baseball researchers to inform a new and current history of baseball in one of its more important and transformational periods.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Steven Gietschier knows that history is not merely a record of what happened long ago but also what it may portend for today’s game, fans, and nation. The Seymours’ scholarly history of baseball ended in 1930; this ambitious, sprawling volume tells us what has happened since and why—it is a splendid successor. If you take a serious interest in baseball, Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years must find a place on your shelf.”—John Thorn, official historian of Major League Baseball


“Baseball seemingly lurched from one crisis to the next during the middle decades of the twentieth century, as a host of new and newly urgent challenges threatened to overshadow the on-field product. In Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years, Steven Gietschier gives due consideration to both baseball’s triumphs and its blind spots, providing much-needed clarity about a troubled and misunderstood era. Highly recommended!”—Peter Morris, author of A Game of Inches: The Stories behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball


“Business, baseball, and politics make for a fascinating discussion about America during the mid-twentieth century. Good narrative stories are paired with analysis to offer a new look at turbulent time in American history. Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years is a must-read for fans of baseball and American history.”—Leslie Heaphy, associate professor of history at Kent State University at Stark


“Extremely well researched and ingeniously organized. Steven Gietschier has produced a work that I predict will stand the test of time. There is something of value to fans, baseball and cultural historians, and lovers of a good yarn on almost every page.”—Lee Lowenfish, author of the award-winning biography Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman


“‘Dunnie’s baby’—know his real name? What manager lived with ‘an entire retinue of shady characters’? Why did DiMaggio take a pay cut from $40,000 to $50 a month? Here are all the answers. What a stupendous book! All the tumult and shouting of organized baseball’s 150 years of messy, thrilling, hair-raising, and altogether unpredictably beautiful evolution.”—Dave Kindred, author of Leave Out the Tragic Parts: A Grandfather’s Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159911506
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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