Base Ball Founders: The Clubs, Players and Cities of the Northeast That Established the Game

Base Ball Founders completes the series of histories of the clubs and players responsible for making baseball the national pastime that began with the 2011 Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 (McFarland). More than 40 clubs and hundreds of pioneer players from the first hotbeds of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are profiled by leading experts on baseball’s early years. The subjects include legendary clubs such as the Knickerbockers of New York, the Eckfords and Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Athletics of Philadelphia, and Harvard’s first baseball clubs, and fabled players like Jim Creighton, Dickey Pearce and Daniel Adams, but space is also given to less well remembered clubs such as the Champion Club of Jersey City and the Cummaquids of Barnstable, Massachusetts. What united all of these pioneers was that their love of baseball during its early growth pains helped to make it the national pastime.