Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years
Steven P. Gietschier
Oct 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Mike Chamberlain
headphones
Audiobook
24 hr 58 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn more
Want a 2 hr 30 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
Baseball explores the history of organized baseball during the mid-twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures-among them Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Hank Greenberg, and Ford Frick-whose stories figure prominently in baseball's past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness. Combining narrative and analysis, Gietschier tells the game's history while simultaneously exploring its politics and economics, including how the game confronted and barely survived the US's entry into World War II; how owners controlled the players; and how the business of baseball interacted with the federal government. He reveals how baseball handled the return to peacetime and the defining postwar decade, including the integration of the game, the demise of the Negro Leagues, the emergence of television, and the first efforts to expand into new markets. Gietschier considers much of the work done by biographers, scholars, and baseball researchers to inform a new and current history of baseball in one of its more important and transformational periods.
About the author
Steven P. Gietschier is an archival consultant for The Sporting News. He taught American history, sport history, and the history and culture of baseball at a midwestern university before retiring in 2020, and prior to that he served in several roles for The Sporting News.
Mike Chamberlain is an actor and voice-over performer, as well as an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator. Along with animation and video game characters, Mike performs narration and voices promos for television. He lives with his wife and daughter in Southern California.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
