In its infancy, major league baseball was anyone's game, open to a dizzying array of rogues and scamps, athletic giants and captains of industry, hustlers, managers, and umpires who transformed club-based teams into the first professional federations with formalized rules-and commercial considerations. This two-volume work-with its profiles of every key contributor to the major league game from May 4, 1871, through December 31, 1900-is truly "inside baseball." Volume 1 profiles all the key position players and pitchers of the nineteenth century, giving detailed information about each player's role in the game, his debut and finale, high points and low, most important achievements, relationship to ground-breaking diamond occurrences, in addition to fascinating personal information. More than a collection of mere facts and statistics, Major League Baseball Profiles provides a unique history of the evolution of major league baseball, from the date of the first major league game in 1871 through the 1900 season, which marked not only the close of a century but also the unofficial end of what many believe to be the formative period of the game.
David Nemec is the author of twenty-three baseball books, including The Great Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Major League Baseball, winner of the Sporting News SABR Baseball Research Award.
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionExplanation of Player Profile StatisticsChapter 1: The PitchersChapter 2: The CatchersChapter 3: The First BasemenChapter 4: The Second BasemenChapter 5: The Third BasemenChapter 6: The ShortstopsChapter 7: The OutfieldersBibliography List of ContributorsAuthor's Previous Works Index
Provides a unique history of the evolution of Major League baseball
"Whether you are a newcomer to the wonderful world of nineteenth-century baseball or consider yourself to be an expert, you will learn much in this wonderful collection of biographical sketches. While other books have focused on the great pennant races or teams of the era, no book has so vividly presented the colourful stories of so many players as these two volumes do. You will be entertained and you will be smarter, once you spend some time with these books." Mark Armour, author of Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball "David Nemec belongs in the Hall of Fame of early baseball research. Here, he uses a wealth of fascinating details to breathe life back into many little-known nineteenth-century ballplayers whose exploits and, at times, sheer grit are well worth remembering and celebrating." Edward Achorn, author of Fifty-Nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
