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Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns

Walt Whitman’s pronouncement that baseball “belongs as much to our institutions…as our Constitution’s laws” may not hold quite the same currency as it did in the poet’s day—but the sport has accompanied America through countless crises and upheavals and remains more than worthy of historical study. In this ten-part series, which includes the “Tenth Inning” added in 2010, director Ken Burns uses the dramatic lens he so deftly focused on the Civil War to examine (again, in Whitman’s words) “America’s game.” In doing so, Burns has created yet another timeless document that combines elements of history, sociology, mythic grandeur, and street-level poetry. An essential for high schools, academia, and public libraries. Distributed by PBS Distribution. 10-part series, 105-240 minutes each.

Source: Films on Demand

Perspectives

Baseball: a Literary Anthology

Robert Frost never felt more at home in America than when watching baseball "be it in park or sand lot." Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game. Philip Roth considers the terrible thrill of the adolescent centerfielder; Richard Ford listens to minor-league baseball on the radio while driving cross-country; Amiri Baraka remembers the joy of watching the Newark Eagles play in the era before Jackie Robinson shattered the color line. Unforgettable portraits of legendary players who have become icons-Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron-are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them." Poems in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language-Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"-as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

The Faith of 50 Million

The Faith of 50 Millionfeatures essays by religion scholars who analyze the relationship between baseball and theology in American culture. Topics include the sense of national identity, baseball and civil religion, "saints and sinners," baseball and the American Dream with regard to racial integration, women and baseball, baseball as metaphor, and baseball as spiritual autobiography. Readers will love this fascinating intersection of baseball, race, American civil religion, and contemporary sports culture.

Game of Inches

The only book ever to win both the Seymour Medal and the Casey Award as the best baseball book of the year, Peter Morris's magisterial encyclopedia of the national pastime will surprise, delight, and educate even the most knowledgeable fan. With its thousand-odd entries, A Game of Inches illuminates the origins of items ranging from catcher's masks to hook slides to intentional walks to baseball's reserve clause. Now with new material and completely redesigned in a one-volume paperback, the book remains endlessly fascinating, impeccably researched, and engagingly written.

I Never Had It Made

The bestselling autobiography of American baseball and civil rights legend Jackie Robinson Before Reggie Jackson, before Hank Aaron, baseball's stars had one undeniable trait in common: they were all white. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier, striking a crucial blow for racial equality and changing the world of sports forever. I Never Had It Made is Robinson's own candid, hard-hitting account of what it took to become the first black man in history to play in the major leagues. I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson's early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school's first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the "Noble Experiment"--Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball. More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson's life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr. I Never Had It Made endures as an inspiring story of a man whose heroism extended well beyond the playing field.

The Big Fella

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From Jane Leavy, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax, comes the definitive biography of Babe Ruth--the man Roger Angell dubbed "the model for modern celebrity." A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe | Publishers Weekly | Kirkus | Newsweek | The Philadelphia Inquirer | The Progressive Winner of the 2019 SABR Seymour Medal | Finalist for the PEN/ESPN Literary Sports Writing Award | Longlisted for Spitball Magazine's Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year | Finalist for the NBCC Award for Biography "Leavy's newest masterpiece.... A major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling." --Forbes He lived in the present tense--in the camera's lens. There was no frame he couldn't or wouldn't fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace--radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones and loudspeakers--Babe Ruth "made impossible events happen." Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh--business manager, spin doctor, damage control wizard, and surrogate father, all stuffed into one tightly buttoned double-breasted suit--Ruth drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom. His was a life of journeys and itineraries--from uncouth to couth, spartan to spendthrift, abandoned to abandon; from Baltimore to Boston to New York, and back to Boston at the end of his career for a finale with the only team that would have him. There were road trips and hunting trips; grand tours of foreign capitals and post-season promotional tours, not to mention those 714 trips around the bases. After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927--a total that would not be exceeded until 1961, when Roger Maris did it with the aid of the extended modern season--he embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig. Walsh called the tour a "Symphony of Swat." The Omaha World Herald called it "the biggest show since Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and seven other associated circuses offered their entire performance under one tent." In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth's life and times. Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.

The Chicago Cubs

The New York Times bestselling author of Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and theWild Heart of Football "knocks it out of the park" (Vanity Fair) in this captivating blend of sports reportage and memoir, exploring the history of the 2016 World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs. Now a New York Times bestseller When Rich Cohen was eight years old, his father took him to see a Cubs game. On the way out of the park, his father asked him to make a promise. "Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win," he explained, "and because of that, a Cubs fan will have a diminished life determined by low expectations. That team will screw up your life." Cohen became not just a Cubs fan but one of the biggest Cubs fans in the world. In this book, he captures the story of the team, its players and crazy days. Billy Sunday and Ernie Banks, Three Finger Brown and Ryne Sandberg, Bill Buckner, the Bartman Ball, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo--the early dominance followed by a 107 year trek across the wilderness. It's all here, inThe Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse--not just what happened, but what it felt like and what it meant. Featuring extensive interviews with players, owners, and coaches, this mix of memoir, reporting, history, and baseball theology--forty years in the making--has never been written because it never could be. Only with the 2016 World Series can the true arc ofthe story finally be understood.

But Didn't We Have Fun?

But Didn't We Have Fun? covers a period in the early days of baseball that even those who think they know everything about the popular American sport do not know. Peter Morris--an indefatigable researcher and brilliant chronicler, and winner of both the S

Early Innings

This compilation of 120 primary writings documents baseball's first century, from a loosely organized village social event to the arrival of the National League. Collecting from a wide range of sources--including newspaper accounts, letters, folk poetry, songs, and annual guides--Dean A. Sullivan of Fairfax, Virginia, progresses chronologically from the earliest known baseball reference (1825) to the creation of the Doubleday Myth (1908).

Dirt on Their Skirts

You had to be really, really good to play in the 1946 championship game between the Racine Belles and the Rockford Peaches. Sitting in the stands, Margaret thrills to every crack of the bat. Someday she hopes to join her heroes like Sophie "the Flash" Kurys and Betty "Moe" Trezza. As the ball hurtles toward the plate, Margaret can almost feel what it would be like to be in that batter's position, arms tensed, bat held high.As we see this historic game in the annals of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League through the eyes of a fictional young girl, Dirt on Their Skirts is a potent reminder that women athletes have inspired young fans throughout the twentieth century. Based on written accounts and on the memories of the players themselves, this exciting story is for all those sandlot sluggers whose hearts beat a little faster whenever they hear the words?"Play ball!"

Play Ball!

Every time you watch baseball, you're participating in the latest chapter of a compelling story that goes back hundreds of years. In 24 lectures that paint a portrait of the sport's remarkable past and take you from the decades before the Civil War to the pivotal year of 1920, Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America's Pastime strikes a perfect balance between sports lore and cultural history.

Source: Kanopy