Baseball and Cricket: The Creation of American Team Sports, 1838-72

Sport and Society

by George B. Kirsch, Randy W. Roberts, Benjamin G. Rader

How and why Americans chose baseball over its early rival, cricket, as the national pastime In discovering how and why Americans chose baseball over its early rival, cricket, as the national pastime, George B. Kirsch takes us back to amateur playing fields around the country to recreate the excitement of the early matches, the players, clubs, and their fans. As a narrative history,  Baseball and Cricket  places the growing popularity of the two sports within the social context of mid-nineteenth-century American cities. The book's comparative analysis follows baseball's transition from a leisure sport to a commercialized, professional enterprise and offers the first complete discussion of the early American cricket clubs.

A volume in the series Sport and Society, edited by Benjamin G. Rader and Randy Roberts

Genres: Baseball

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2007

Reviews

[Eric Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid comparison of the two sports in early America it appears to be a dissertation turned into a book. It’s hard to 10”% recommend it as the origin story of baseball is constantly changing with new research.