October Is Baseball's World Series Time!

​Baseball: An Illustrated History is written by Geoffrey Ward and based on extensive research for the 1994 Emmy Award-winning National Public Television documentary titled Baseball, by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns. 
 
The sport is a uniquely American.  It's a blend of two British games, Cricket and Rounders.  It was played as early as 1778 by American Revolutionary War soldiers at Valley Forge.  It is the only game that is played with a ball in which the ball is not involved in scoring.  
 
In 1839 Abner Doubleday drafted written rules for this hybrid game. Doubleday's rules dictated that it would be played on a square, and there would be a "base" at each 90-degree angle of the square.  To score, a batter, starting at the home base (home plate), would have to circumnavigate and touch all four bases. Doubleday called the game base-ball.  On one level the game is incredibly simple, but at another level it can be incredibly complex. 
 
Baseball is a sport of emotion and devotion.  It grew with America and became a part of our nation's soul. Its history parallels the American experience.  It spans the quest for racial justice, clashes of labor and management, and many other   

issues. The sport transformed our popular culture and became a national pastime. ​Baseball: An Illustrated History gets an A+ for browsability, is well indexed, and is the gold standard by which subsequent histories of baseball will be judged.
 
The Coffman Library just added a copy of this book to its collection.  For the next two months, unless it's been loaned to another resident, it will be on the Recent and Relevant shelves.