A brilliant new approach to our game and its author tells a hundred stories you haven’t heard before. It is my honor to invite you to enter into his world. -John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball

Here’s the fascinating origin story of baseball, where America’s first sport came from and how it conquered a nation. Baseball’s true founders were the thousands of amateurs – ordinary people – who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They practiced professions, built businesses and fought in the Civil War.

Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren’t invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn’t part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see baseball, the writing was on the outfield wall.

When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage and famous stars. Professional baseball invented itself, but not the sport of baseball. Baseball’s amazing amateurs had already done that. If you love history and sports, you’ll love their story.