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Past Time: Baseball As History
Few writers know more about baseball's role in American life than Jules Tygiel. In Baseball's Great Jackie Robinson and His Legacy , Tygiel penned a classic work, a landmark book that towers above most writing about the sport. Now he ranges across the last century and a half in an intriguing look at baseball as history, and history as reflected in baseball.
In Past Time , Tygiel gives us a seat behind home plate, where we catch the ongoing interplay of baseball and American society. We begin in New York in the 1850s, where pre-Civil War nationalism shaped the emergence of a "national pastime." We witness the true birth of modern baseball with the development of its elaborate statistics--the brainchild of English-born reformer, Henry Chadwick. Chadwick, Tygiel writes, created the sport's "historical essence" and even imparted a moral dimension to the game with his concepts of "errors" and "unearned" runs. Tygiel offers equally insightful looks at the role of rags-to-riches player-owners in the formation of the upstart American League and he describes the complex struggle to establish African-American baseball in a segregated world. He also examines baseball during the Great Depression (when Branch Rickey and Larry MacPhail saved the game by perfecting the farm system, night baseball, and radio broadcasts), the ironies of Bobby Thomson's
immortal "shot heard 'round the world," the rapid relocation of franchises in the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of rotisserie leagues and fantasy camps in the 1980s.
In Past Time , Jules Tygiel provides baseball history with a difference. Instead of a pitch-by-pitch account of great games, in this groundbreaking book, the field is American history and baseball itself is the star.
In Past Time , Tygiel gives us a seat behind home plate, where we catch the ongoing interplay of baseball and American society. We begin in New York in the 1850s, where pre-Civil War nationalism shaped the emergence of a "national pastime." We witness the true birth of modern baseball with the development of its elaborate statistics--the brainchild of English-born reformer, Henry Chadwick. Chadwick, Tygiel writes, created the sport's "historical essence" and even imparted a moral dimension to the game with his concepts of "errors" and "unearned" runs. Tygiel offers equally insightful looks at the role of rags-to-riches player-owners in the formation of the upstart American League and he describes the complex struggle to establish African-American baseball in a segregated world. He also examines baseball during the Great Depression (when Branch Rickey and Larry MacPhail saved the game by perfecting the farm system, night baseball, and radio broadcasts), the ironies of Bobby Thomson's
immortal "shot heard 'round the world," the rapid relocation of franchises in the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of rotisserie leagues and fantasy camps in the 1980s.
In Past Time , Jules Tygiel provides baseball history with a difference. Instead of a pitch-by-pitch account of great games, in this groundbreaking book, the field is American history and baseball itself is the star.
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 20, 2000
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About the author
Jules Tygiel
21 books1 followerA graduate of Brooklyn College, Jules Tygiel earned his master's and doctorate degrees at UCLA and taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Tennessee before receiving a position at San Francisco State University. A self-professed fan of baseball, he was the founder of the Pacific Ghost League, a fantasy baseball league.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 18, 2021
Patrick Willems mentioned this book in his amazing video essay about baseball movies, and I decided to seek it out. I'm glad I did, even if the rating of three stars would indicate otherwise. For this is a good, though dry, scholarly look at various aspects of baseball's history as it relates to American history in total.
Jules Tygiel, the author, divides the book into nine essays, each reflecting aspects of baseball's history over the century and a half before the book's publication in 2000. Each essay talks about aspects of the game that sometimes get a lot of coverage (Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," for instance) but sometimes get minimal coverage (such as the statistical foundations laid by Henry Chadwick in the mid-nineteenth century, which are the basis for how we still measure a player's abilities). I read the book cover to cover, and while I enjoyed many of the aspects of the book (including the illuminating essay on the Negro Leagues and the ways in which nostalgia in the Eighties contributed to the baseball "boom"), I found the overall effect of the book to be like something you'd be assigned to read in a history class. It's not completely dry, by any stretch, but at times I felt a little lost in the weeds of the topic Tygiel was pursuing.
I would recommend this book anyway, because it's not trying to be a definitive history of the game or of the aspects it addresses in the individual essays. And it's very well done overall, if a little dry. It's already in my pile of "books to donate to a thrift store," but that's not necessarily a mark against it. I enjoyed reading it, I just don't see me wanting to revisit it enough to continue owning it.
Jules Tygiel, the author, divides the book into nine essays, each reflecting aspects of baseball's history over the century and a half before the book's publication in 2000. Each essay talks about aspects of the game that sometimes get a lot of coverage (Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," for instance) but sometimes get minimal coverage (such as the statistical foundations laid by Henry Chadwick in the mid-nineteenth century, which are the basis for how we still measure a player's abilities). I read the book cover to cover, and while I enjoyed many of the aspects of the book (including the illuminating essay on the Negro Leagues and the ways in which nostalgia in the Eighties contributed to the baseball "boom"), I found the overall effect of the book to be like something you'd be assigned to read in a history class. It's not completely dry, by any stretch, but at times I felt a little lost in the weeds of the topic Tygiel was pursuing.
I would recommend this book anyway, because it's not trying to be a definitive history of the game or of the aspects it addresses in the individual essays. And it's very well done overall, if a little dry. It's already in my pile of "books to donate to a thrift store," but that's not necessarily a mark against it. I enjoyed reading it, I just don't see me wanting to revisit it enough to continue owning it.
August 29, 2015
Tygiel put together a cohesive collection of essays about sport and society through the prism of baseball. This book is good enough (and affordable enough) that I'm adopting it in my History of Baseball class, but there are some shortcomings. Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, and Joe Dimaggio, for example, are hardly mentioned. The same can be said for the 1970s and 1980s, which are exceptionally fertile periods for writers on the subject to engage. That said Tygiel covers Henry Chadwick, the expansion period, and Branch Rickey quite well.
May 12, 2025
A good book, but it lacks depth in places. Which is surprising because in other places it has ample depth. Tygiel utilizes a cute format to address the history of MLB, aside from a brief foray into pre-MLB and Negro Leagues ball. A lot of my issues come down to framing. the token chapter on the Negro Leagues feels exactly like that, a token. His continued usage of organized baseball to refer to MLB is both annoyingly dismissive of other leagues and a product of the times. There's also a tinge of, "well some of these teams are just too poor" peppered through the book and the capitalist leaning are a bit much at times. Still, it's mostly well written and interesting, worth a read at least.
December 25, 2019
Excellent series of essays looking at the history of baseball against the backdrop of the history of America, from the concept of self-made magnates, to how and why baseball distinguished itself as a quintessentially American sport, to the role and use of statistics, and the involvement of the fan in defining the sport. Really well done. The only thing that could make it better would be a couple more essays taking it past the mid-nineties - I'd love to see how such a book would handle the steroids era.
February 16, 2023
As I continue to dive deeper and deeper into baseball literature, this book stands as one of the finest writings I’ve found on the topic. My only regret is that it wasn’t among the earliest of the books I dove into, as it is a remarkably accessible, thorough, yet simultaneously succinct, history of the sport as it relates to American society. Can’t wait to dive into some more of Jules Tygiel’s writing!
October 19, 2025
Exceptional collection of chapters reflecting the ways in which baseball and American society have influenced each other since the sport’s founding and emerging national appeal around the Civil War period. Highly readable and convincing throughout.
August 2, 2012
This is an interesting collection of essays that sort of straddles the line between being a history of baseball and a history of how baseball fits into American history. The emphasis is more on the latter, but of course, you can't explain how baseball fits into American history without talking some about the history of baseball. Well written and informative, I just wish it felt less like a textbook. But still worth a read if you're a fan of American history and baseball.
March 26, 2015
Basically what Tygiel gives us here is Warren Susman's "Culture as History" redux, this time as "Baseball as History." And it's tremendously effective, with entries that are surprisingly deep and that would likely go over well in an upper-level undergraduate seminar course. The essay on Henry Chadwick and the creation of baseball statistics is especially compelling, and almost worth the cost of admission (which was $0, in my case; OUP sent me a review copy).
April 23, 2012
Informative and interesting
February 28, 2015
Without a doubt the best book on baseball all around!
July 29, 2015
A great historical overview of baseball from its 1800s beginnings to the rise of fantasy baseball in the 1990s. Take your time reading it, it's fascinating.
April 5, 2017
2001 Seymour Medal Winner
2001 Dave Moore Award Finalist
2000 New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Briefly: Episodic history
Jules Tygiel opens Past Time by declaring, “This is a collection of essays about American history. I say that lest this be mistaken for a book about baseball.” It’s a bold claim—and ultimately, one Tygiel can’t quite live up to. Past Time is a book about the history of baseball and its evolution alongside the growing and changing American society. On those terms, if not its own, it succeeds.
Tygiel seems to know this, too. In some eras, he quotes from writers speaking about the metaphorical relationship between baseball and Americana, for instance quoting Melvin Adelman on the birth of baseball: “Baseball’s structure expressed the American notion of individualism, with its emphasis on independence, self-reliance and equality [and the] American commitment to equal opportunity as each batter is afforded roughly the same number of at bats regardless of success.” Regarding this and other symbolic claims, Tygiel admits, “Several recent commentators have performed metaphorical gymnastics to shoehorn the baseball diamond into the American soul.”
On the other end of the spectrum, in his chapter on baseball in the 1920s, Tygiel concedes, “To see Ruth as a particular product of the twenties, or even the modern age, seems to over-intellectualize a simple subject. It is hard to imagine any people, in any era, who would not have been enthralled by Babe Ruth.”
These two poles aside, Tygiel presents an enjoyable history of baseball and its evolution in America, explaining how cultural events such as the invention of radio, segregation and Jim Crow, and modern computing affected both the sport and the American baseball fan experience.
2001 Dave Moore Award Finalist
2000 New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Briefly: Episodic history
Jules Tygiel opens Past Time by declaring, “This is a collection of essays about American history. I say that lest this be mistaken for a book about baseball.” It’s a bold claim—and ultimately, one Tygiel can’t quite live up to. Past Time is a book about the history of baseball and its evolution alongside the growing and changing American society. On those terms, if not its own, it succeeds.
Tygiel seems to know this, too. In some eras, he quotes from writers speaking about the metaphorical relationship between baseball and Americana, for instance quoting Melvin Adelman on the birth of baseball: “Baseball’s structure expressed the American notion of individualism, with its emphasis on independence, self-reliance and equality [and the] American commitment to equal opportunity as each batter is afforded roughly the same number of at bats regardless of success.” Regarding this and other symbolic claims, Tygiel admits, “Several recent commentators have performed metaphorical gymnastics to shoehorn the baseball diamond into the American soul.”
On the other end of the spectrum, in his chapter on baseball in the 1920s, Tygiel concedes, “To see Ruth as a particular product of the twenties, or even the modern age, seems to over-intellectualize a simple subject. It is hard to imagine any people, in any era, who would not have been enthralled by Babe Ruth.”
These two poles aside, Tygiel presents an enjoyable history of baseball and its evolution in America, explaining how cultural events such as the invention of radio, segregation and Jim Crow, and modern computing affected both the sport and the American baseball fan experience.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews