From Cartwright to Shoeless Joe: The Warwick Compendium to Early Baseball

Rating:
Summary: Lots of fun; not enough story, too many stats
Review: The first third or so of this book is a history of early baseball from the anarchic "rounders" to an adult game with an agreed on set of rules. There are lots of great stories about basic things, like the invention of the baseball glove and how Al Spalding first came up with the idea that fielders shouldn't stand right by their base (duh!). But most of the book is short histories of all the teams that ever played (like the Cincinatti Porkers), most of them lasting no more than a couple years in the 1880's and 1890s. There are also lifetime stats on lots of early players. I wish more of the book had been on the early history, but perhaps there just isn't that much information known.