The Kitty League

Between 1903 and 1955, the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League--better known as the "Kitty League"--brought minor-league baseball to fans throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana. Supporting teams with such colorful nicknames as the Hoppers, Oilers, Clothiers, Egyptians, and Miners, the league produced many great players, such as Tony Kubek, Chuck Tanner, and Don McMahon, who enjoyed solid major-league careers. It also produced future Hall of Famers Edd Roush and Red Schoendienst. The Kitty League also provided major-league veterans like Earl Browne, Hod Lisenbee, and Vito Tamulis the chance to keep playing the game they loved.

Between 1903 and 1955, the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League--better known as the "Kitty League"--brought minor-league baseball to fans throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana. Supporting teams with such colorful nicknames as the Hoppers, Oilers, Clothiers, Egyptians, and Miners, the league produced many great players, such as Tony Kubek, Chuck Tanner, and Don McMahon, who enjoyed solid major-league careers. It also produced future Hall of Famers Edd Roush and Red Schoendienst. The Kitty League also provided major-league veterans like Earl Browne, Hod Lisenbee, and Vito Tamulis the chance to keep playing the game they loved.

Baseball exploded in Evansville after the Civil War. Early clubs like the Resolutes, Blues, Brewers, Hoosiers and Blackbirds played, built ballparks, struggled financially and suffered scandals until the early 1900s. A near tragic event fueled the 1915 construction of Bosse Field, now the third-oldest professional ballpark in operation and the host to Major League Spring Training and the filming of A League of Their Own. After World War II, college baseball returned after lying dormant since the 1920s. In the late 1960s, a local entrepreneur attempted to build a third major league. When he failed, the city ascended to the minor leagues' highest level. Join sportswriter and Evansville native Kevin Wirthwein as he recounts baseball's illustrious history in the River City.

This biography of Edd Roush, Indiana-born deadball batting king, centers on the events of the 1919 Black Sox World series but covers his life in full. Roush earned two National League batting titles and entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. The work contains interviews with Roush and photographs, many from the Roush family collection.

Long before strip malls, television and huge retail chains homogenized American culture, minor league baseball clubs represented individual, local ideals. Fans turned out in droves to see their hometown heroes, and teams were sources of civic pride and popular recreation. Gradually, these teams and leagues were either driven under or swallowed up by baseball's vertical integration, and by 1963 a significant piece of the American landscape had all but disappeared. This heavily researched reference work covers every official minor league All-Star team from 1922 (when the first such team was named) to 1962 (the last year of the AAA-D classification system). Each entry includes the full roster of an All-Star team, complete individual hitting and pitching statistics, and detailed commentary on the selections. Where sabermetrics indicate more-deserving players were passed over, the author presents the case for alternative candidates.

An unforgettable look at how baseball families share our national pastime. Baseball honors legacies—from cheering the home team to breaking in an old glove handed down from father to son. In The Dad Report, award-winning sportswriter Kevin Cook weaves a tapestry of uplifting stories in which fathers and sons—from the sport's superstars to Cook and his own ball-playing father—share the game. Almost two hundred father-son pairs have played in the big leagues. Cook takes us inside the clubhouses, homes, and lives of many of the greats. Aaron Boone follows grandfather Bob, father Ray, and brother Bret to the majors—three generations of All-Stars. Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. strive to outdo their famous dads. Michael Jordan walks away from basketball to play minor-league baseball—to fulfill his father's dream. In visiting these legendary families, Cook discovers that ball-playing families are a lot like our own. Dan Haren regrets the long road trips that keep him from his kids. Ike Davis and his father, a former Yankee, debate whether Ike should pitch or play first base. Buddy Bell leads a generation of big-leaguers determined to open their workplace—the clubhouse—to their kids. Framing The Dad Report is the story of Kevin Cook's own father, Art Cook, a minor-league pitcher, a loveable rogue with a wicked screwball. In Art's later years, Kevin phoned him almost every night to talk baseball. They called those nightly conversations "the Dad Report." In time, Kevin came to see that these conversations were about much more than the game. That's what this book is about: the way fathers and sons talk baseball as a way of talking about everything—courage, fear, fun, family, morality, mortality, and how it's not whether you win or lose that counts, it's how you share the game.

This #1 bestselling baseball classic of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is “dazzling . . . heart-stopping . . . A celebration of a vanished heroic age” (The New York Times Book Review). The summer of 1949: It was baseball’s Golden Age and the year Joe DiMaggio’s New York Yankees were locked in a soon-to-be classic battle with Ted Williams’s Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant. As postwar America looked for a unifying moment, the greatest players in baseball history brought their rivalry to the field, captivating the American public through the heart-pounding final moments of the season. This expansive story captures an era, incorporating profiles of the players and their families, fans, broadcasters, baseball executives, and sportswriters. Riveting in its blend of powerful detail and exhilarating narrative, The Summer of ’49 is Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam’s engrossing look at not only a sports rivalry, but a time when America’s very identity was wrapped up in its beloved national game. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

Adelson interviews dozens of athletes, managers, and sportswriters to chronicle the social plight of the presence of African-American ballplayers in the minor leagues. 20 illustrations.