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Baseball: History, Players, & Coaching: 1910s

A research topic guide on the history and legendary players of baseball.

Resources

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Babe Ruth

An Awful Thing to Do

Charles Comiskey's Chicago White Sox were heavy favorites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 World Series. Arnold Rothstein, agreed to pay Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver, "Lefty" Williams, "Happy" Felsch, Charles "Swede" Risberg, and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson to throw the Series. Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Source: Films on Demand

Perspectives

The Big Fella

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.

Fall from Grace: The Truth and Tragedy of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson

Considered by Ty Cobb as "the finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average--which is still ranked third all-time--the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core. While many have sympathized with Jackson's ban from baseball (even though he hit .375 during the 1919 World Series), not much is truly known about this quiet slugger. Whether he participated in the throwing of the World Series or not, he is still considered one of the game's best, and many have fought for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. From the author of Turning the Black Sox White (on Charles Comiskey) and War on the Basepaths (on Ty Cobb), Shoeless Joe tells the story of the incredible life of Joseph Jefferson Jackson. From a mill boy to a baseball icon, author Tim Hornbaker breaks down the rise and fall of "Shoeless Joe," giving an inside look during baseball's Deadball Era, including Jackson's personal point of view of the "Black Sox" scandal, which has never been covered before. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Babe Ruth

Unparalleled by any other baseball star in history, Babe Ruth was a lively character remembered for his dramatic heroism on the baseball diamond and in his life. Kal Wagenheim illustrates this larger-than-life athlete in his book Babe Ruth: His Life & Legend, and describes him as both a product of his childhood in Baltimore and of his formative years as a New York Yankee. He struggled desperately with the drastic contrast between the poverty of his youth and the glamour and stardom that his famed career brought him, and although his name became synonymous with wooing women and abusing alcohol, neither prevented him from becoming one of history's greatest athletes.

It Ain't So

In 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox famously conspired to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, were banned from organized baseball for life. But what if the Black Sox scandal had never happened? Using computer simulation, this book provides an alternative history of the American League, the White Sox, and the banned players from 1919 through 1932 while chronicling the White Sox organization's real-life struggles to rebuild its roster.

Say It Ain't So, Joe!

Traces the life of Jackson, one of the greatest hitters of all time, who was unfairly disgraced at the height of his career by the Chicago Black Sox scandal.

A National Heirloom

During the 1920s, Babe Ruth’s phenomenal performance at the plate made him the savior of baseball, rescuing the game from the Black Sox scandal of the previous decade. This program focuses on that miraculous period, in which power hitting became the centerpiece of baseball’s allure and the monikers “Bambino” and “Sultan of Swat” conjured a magic understood by an entire nation. Viewers learn about the end of the “dead ball” era and the consequential increase in home runs, the achievements of Hornsby and Gehrig, and a Phillies vs. Pirates contest that took place on August 5th, 1921—the first game ever broadcast on radio. Distributed by PBS Distribution. Part of the series Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns. (1 hour 55 minutes)

Source: Films on Demand