Understanding Baseball: A Textbook

by Mitchell Nathanson, Trey Strecker, Steven P. Gietschier

The study of baseball history and culture reveals the national game as a contested field where debates about sport, character, work and play, the country and the city, labor, race, and a host of other issues, circulate. Understanding baseball, then, calls for careful consideration of several different perspectives and what each contributes to the conversation.

220 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 31, 2015

About the author

Mitch Nathanson is a Professor of Law at Villanova University and the author of numerous books and articles on baseball, the law and society. He is a two-time winner of the McFarland-SABR Award, which is presented in recognition of the best historical or biographical baseball articles of the year. His biography of the mercurial slugger Dick Allen: "God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen," was a finalist for the 2017 Seymour Medal. His current book, BOUTON: The Life of a Baseball Original," explores the life of a man who won all of 62 games but who changed professional sports in ways 300-game winners never could. To which Jim Bouton's Seattle Pilot teammate, Jim Gosger, would most likely say, "Yeah surrre."