Baseball History from Outside the Lines: A Reader

by John E. Dreifort (Editor)

Baseball History from Outside the Lines gathers the best recent historical literature about the game. These well-written essays describe developments in the game's past, assess their impact, and explain how they reflect the period in which they occurred. The essays also explore baseball's influences outside the field of play as well as the effect of external factors on the game. The contributors discuss such key issues as demographics, communities, social mobility, race and ethnicity, baseball as a business, player-management relations, amateurs, women, and international play.

Genres: History, Baseball

363 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Andrew McHenry]

This was a good compilation work, examining different facets of baseball history - going back to it's inception, into the heyday years of organized ball, coming up to the present time of writing (2001). I particularly appreciated the chapters on the origins, the demise of the Philadelphia A's, and the history of labor relations. There are also good contribution on how the game has been played/perceived in other countries, and on different ethnic groups' experiences of the game. The only fault is that it lacks footnotes. Those of us who appreciate the sources miss that feature.

[Roncibio]

As a professor who teaches a course on baseball, I have yet to find a better anthology that Dreifort's Outside the Lines. Driefort made excellent choices on the selections placing a strong focus on the diversity of experiences the define the histories of baseball rather than settling for the mainstream interpretation of that national pastime that is both incomplete and exclusionary. So unfortunate that the anthology has never been revised.