Anderson - Baseball and Its Greatest Players

BASEBALL
AND ITS GREATEST PLAYERS

inside sports

EDITED BY MICHAEL ANDERSON

Published in 2012 by Britannica Educational Publishing
(a trademark of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.)
in association with Rosen Educational Services, LLC
29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010.

Copyright 2012 Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. Britannica, Encyclopdia Britannica, and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.

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First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baseball and its greatest players / edited by Michael Anderson.
p. cm.(Inside sports)
In association with Britannica Educational Publishing, Rosen Educational Services.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61530-559-9 (eBook)
1. BaseballUnited States--History. 2. Baseball playersUnited StatesHistory. I. Anderson,
Michael (Michael J.), 1972
GV863.A1.B37645 2010
796.357640973dc22

2010052806

On the : First baseman Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals bats during an away game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005. After that season, having hit .330 with 41 homers and 117 runs batted in, Pujols was named the National Leagues Most Valuable Player. Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Pages www.istockphoto.com/stock_art; back cover, remaining interior background image Shutterstock.com

T hink about baseball for a moment. What comes to mind? Childhood experiences from Little League, such as the thrill of sliding into home plate or the anguish of being tagged out on second? Staying up late to watch a game on TV with friends and family? Going to see a game in person, with the sharp shouts of souvenir vendors, the crisp crack of the bat, and the crowds cheers and chants?

Around the world, and especially for many in America, there is a deep and emotional component to the game. As former baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Bart Giamatti said in his essay Green Fields of the Mind: It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Though by numbers alone baseball players, managers, and owners represent but a small facet of societyand a male-dominated facet at thatthe influence of the game extends far beyond the diamond. In the United States, where baseball has long occupied a special place in the countrys psyche, it has also served as a kind of national mirror. A country that prides itself on abiding by the rule of law, America and baseball have grown up together, guided byand sometimes falling short ofthe games goals of good sportsmanship and fair play. An early example of a moral lapse occurred nearly a century ago, with the notorious game-fixing Black Sox Scandal of 1919. Happily, a few decades later, great strides forward were made as the issue of racial integration took center field, and Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As for recent headlines, the rise of performance-enhancing drug use calls into question how far Americans are willing to go to see new records set. The staggering rise in salaries, too, has tested public goodwill toward the sport. In the era of free agency, superstars can command salaries and endorsements of more than 30 million dollars a year. For some, the schism between player incomes and those of the average fannational census figures show that the median household income for 2009 hovered at around 50 thousand dollarsreflects not only the excess of the sports world but also a country increasingly divided between rich and poor.

A ball arcing into the stands brings the game of baseball to a whole new level of excitement for fans. Here at Wrigley Field, spectators become participants as they scramble for the ball at a 2010 game between the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers. Chicago Tribune/McClatchy-Tribune/Getty Images

Going beyond Americas shores, this book documents the global reach of the sportin Latin America and Asiabecause from Cuba to Korea, Venezuela to Japan, baseball has millions of fans around the world. But no matter where the game is played, baseball is perennially about personalities, statistics, and of course, athleticism. As this concise volume brings readers back to the games origins, explaining the ins and outs of the sport, it also highlights luminaries from Hank Aaron to Ichiro Suzuki, exceptional players who have made baseball the game it is today.

Although baseball legend Yogi Berra, famous for his one-liners, said of the game, In baseball you dont know nothing, Baseball and Its Greatest Players provides a brief but insightful look at the game so that readers, will indeed, come away knowing something.

T he sport of baseball developed in the eastern United States in the mid-1800s. From there it spread to big cities and small towns across the country. By the turn of the 20th century, baseball was known as Americas national pastime. To some people, baseball was also considered a symbol of the countrys character. Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game, wrote American author and historian Jacques Barzun.