Acknowledgments
Prologue A Dying Ember
First Inning Baseball Fever and Pioneers
Second Inning Organizing Clubs, Funding, Travel, and the Game’s Rituals
Third Inning Playing Fields, Gambling, and Injuries
Fourth Inning The Game and Its Players
Fifth Inning Sharing the Fun
Sixth Inning Barriers of Race and Gender
Seventh Inning Trouble in Baseball’s Eden
Eighth Inning Representative Teams
Ninth Inning The Thrill Departs
Epilogue Ghosts
Appendix A Illinois Baseball Teams, 1865-70
Appendix B Bloomington’s Fifth Ward School-Grounds Neighborhood
Appendix C Illinois Baseball Players, 1865-70
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Robert D. Sampson is the editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and the author of John L. O’Sullivan and His Times.
"Highly entertaining with useful appendices." --Spitball Magazine "Provides a wealth of detail about the origins of the Illinois game and the teams who played it from Chicago down south to Cairo and nearly every town in between." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A delightful collection of history and baseball anecdotes for both casual and serious baseball fans." --Illinois Times "Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins makes clear that there was a simplicity, innocence, and freshness to baseball in Illinois in these years, even as Sampson details the movement-probably inevitable-toward a more competitive and more professional level of play." --Third Coast Review "Effectively blends history and nostalgia, sparking an appreciation of the National pastime. . . . This 250-page gem by Robert D. Sampson is an exhaustive focus on baseball's early style and sweep when gentlemanly players, civic leaders, and hosts of spectators stressed the bliss more than the score." --Community Word “Detailed studies of baseball during these crucial years are rare, with ones that focus on a single state even more so. Bob Sampson’s Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins is thus both timely and valuable, confirming some long-accepted assumptions and forcing reexamination of others. Highly recommended!”--Peter Morris, author of Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan
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