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This book is a meticulously-researched history of professional baseball as told through the stories of the 124 franchises that have comprised the major leagues since 1871.
Customer Review: Interesting and informative book on baseball clubs.
Teenagers who love the game (and older folks as well) will enjoy this book. Lots of information and makes interesting reading.
Customer Review: More about the business end of baseball than the game on the field
But where else will you find info on every major league club since 1876? (But not since 1871; the National Association is not included.) Top players' season stats are usually given for each team, and say, Hoss Radbourne's 1884 season is discussed in detail, but to me the primary focus seemed on the owners and their machinations. And purposely or not, the owners generally come off as a bunch of money grubbers who seldom had the good of the game at heart. Or maybe that type of owner is just more interesting to write about. One noticeable thing is that because of the many franchise shifts in the 19th century, there are roughly as many 19th century clubs to write about as 20th century. Of course, since many of the 19th century clubs were short-lived, they take up less space on average. Each team's record, where it placed in the league standings, and its managers are given for each year in a table at the end of that team's entry. However, there are no tables of league standings showing all teams at once; nor are there any tables of player performances included anywhere. Some interesting note about players and others are in brief sidebars and footbars. I debated about rating the book four stars, since it spends so much time on the business end of baseball, but decided to go with five stars, as where else will you find narrative histories of all the major league baseball clubs in one inexpensive book?


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