This reference work is in two parts. The first is a biographical dictionary of the 325 men who played in the National Association between 1871 and 1875, with their playing record, together with what we know of their other baseball experience and their lives beyond baseball. The book also contains a dictionary of the 25 clubs who participated in the league, showing their history, their management, their uniforms and logos, their home grounds, and their performance in the league. About 150 player photographs are included and each club entry has two or three supporting images (18 are historical maps). Bibliography and index.

On May 4, 1871, Bobby Mathews pitching for the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne, Indiana, faced James Deacon White, the catcher for Forest City of Cleveland. On the pitch, White laced a double into right field at Fort Wayne's Hamilton Field. Thus was the beginning of the National Association, baseball's first professional league. This is a history of a loose alliance of mostly hard-drinking, undisciplined players, and driven, sometimes irascible, owners. It is the story of the Wright brothers (George and Harry) who brought fundamentals to the game that are still used, and players such as Albert Spalding who won 207 games during the league's existence. The appendix provides season by season batting averages and pitching records for each team, as well as the Association's all-time leaders in batting average, pitching wins, and hits.

Doug Lennox, the world champion of trivia, is back to score touchdowns, hit homers, and knock in holes-in-one every time with a colossal compendium of Q&A athletics that has all anyone could possibly want to know about sports, from archery and cycling to skiing and wrestling and everything in between.

This is the previously untold story of the London Tecumsehs, an 1870s baseball team that rose to the top ranks of pro ball. The Tecumsehs of London, Ontario, were among the founding members of the International Association in 1877, the first league established to challenge the struggling National League, formed a year earlier. The team played against the top competition of the day and defeated nines from Chicago, St. Louis and elsewhere. They became the first champions of the International Association when they defeated Pittsburgh with the arm of Fred Goldsmith, one of the first curveball pitchers. This is also the story of the International Association, the only one of the six leagues challenging the primacy of the National League that has never been accorded major league status. To this day it has been relegated to minor league status to the detriment of some of the pioneer players in the game.

Founded in 1869, the Chicago Cubs are a charter member of the National League and the last remaining of the eight original league clubs still playing in the city in which the franchise started. Drawing on newspaper articles, books and archival records, the author chronicles the team's early years. He describes the club's planning stages of 1868; covers the decades when the ballplayers were variously called White Stockings, Colts, and Orphans; and relates how a sportswriter first referred to the young players as Cubs in the March 27, 1902, issue of the Chicago Daily News. Reprinted selections from firsthand accounts provide a colorful narrative of baseball in 19th-century America, as well as a documentary history of the Chicago team and its members before they were the Cubs.

Dating back to 1869 as an organized professional sport, the game of baseball is not only the oldest professional sport in North America, but also symbolizes much more. Walt Whitman described it as “our game, the American game,” and George Will compared calling baseball “just a game” to the Grand Canyon being “just a hole.” Countless others have called baseball “the most elegant game,” and to those who have played it, it’s life. The Historical Dictionary of Baseball is primarily devoted to the major leagues it also includes entries on the minor leagues, the Negro Leagues, women’s baseball, baseball in various other countries, and other non-major league related topics. It traces baseball, in general, and these topics individually, from their beginnings up to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on the roles of the players on the field—batters, pitchers, fielders—as well as non-playing personnel—general managers, managers, coaches, and umpires. There are also entries for individual teams and leagues, stadiums and ballparks, the role of the draft and reserve clause, and baseball’s rules, and statistical categories. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of baseball.

Before the onset of professional baseball, there existed a myriad of teams and players going back to the 1840s. The early years centered around an organization known as the National Association of Base Ball Players. This group, the antecedents of which date to 1857, governed the world of baseball until the formation of the first all-professional league in 1871. This book is the definitive statistical reference to that organization, from its humble beginnings through its explosive growth after the Civil War, culminating with its coast-to-coast inclusion of several hundred amateur and professional clubs. Relying for the most part on primary sources, the author has included introductory essays for each year, complete team statistics, every game score, and individual batting and pitching statistics for all players.