Our Game
An American Baseball History
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
About this listen
This entertaining history blends anecdote, incident, and analysis as it chronicles the story of our national pastime. Alexander covers the advent of the first professional baseball leagues, the game’s surge in the early 20th century, the Golden 20s and the Gray 30s, the breaking of the color line in the late 40s, and the game’s expansion to its current status as a premier team sport. He describes changing playing styles and outstanding teams and personalities but also demonstrates the many connections between baseball - as game, sport, and business - and the evolution of tastes, values, and institutions in the United States.
About the author: Charles C. Alexander, formerly a distinguished professor of history at Ohio University, is the author of a number of books, including the celebrated biographies Ty Cobb and John McGraw.
©1991 Charles C. Alexander (P)1998 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.
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BOTH BOOK AND TEAM NEED TO BE BETTER
- By Ray on 09-06-15
By: Molly Knight
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Summer of '68
- The Season That Changed Baseball - and America - Forever
- By: Tim Wendel
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".
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Detroit Upsets St. Louis in 1968 World Series.
- By Matthew Tsien on 05-01-18
By: Tim Wendel
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Power Ball
- Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game
- By: Rob Neyer
- Narrated by: Rob Neyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The former ESPN columnist and analytics pioneer dramatically recreates an action-packed 2017 game between the Oakland A’s and eventual World Series champion Houston Astros to reveal the myriad ways in which Major League Baseball has changed over the last few decades.
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Solid overview of Baseball in 2018
- By Tyler Burch on 11-21-18
By: Rob Neyer
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The League
- How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire
- By: John Eisenberg
- Narrated by: Daniel Thomas May
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.
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what a great book. loved it completely.
- By Daniel Mosca on 11-08-18
By: John Eisenberg
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The Grandest Stage
- A History of the World Series
- By: Tyler Kepner
- Narrated by: Tyler Kepner
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.
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Excellent!
- By DavidF on 09-09-24
By: Tyler Kepner
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A Nice Little Place on the North Side
- Wrigley Field at One Hundred
- By: George Will
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history?
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It's EEE-lia, not Ah-LEE-ah
- By Shawcago on 04-25-16
By: George Will
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Our Team
- The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball
- By: Luke Epplin
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The riveting story of four men - Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige - whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond.
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Who will like this book?
- By Brian L. Quarton on 04-03-21
By: Luke Epplin
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The Last Innocents
- The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers
- By: Michael Leahy
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players - friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies - and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.
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Reliving my youth
- By PJ on 05-24-17
By: Michael Leahy
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Homegrown
- How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up
- By: Alex Speier
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The 2018 season was a coronation for the Boston Red Sox. The best team in Major League Baseball - indeed, one of the best teams ever - the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 against the three next-strongest teams baseball had to offer. As Alex Speier reveals, the Sox’ success wasn’t a fluke - nor was it guaranteed. It was the result of careful, patient planning and shrewd decision-making that allowed Boston to develop a golden generation of prospects - and then build upon that talented core to assemble a juggernaut.
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Great read if you like the Red Sox or baseball ops
- By Amazon Customer on 01-11-20
By: Alex Speier
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The Year of the Pitcher
- Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age
- By: Sridhar Pappu
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Year of the Pitcher is the story of the remarkable 1968 baseball season, which culminated in one of the greatest World Series contests ever, with the Detroit Tigers coming back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Cardinals in Game Seven of the World Series. In 1968, two remarkable pitchers would dominate the game as well as the broadsheets. One was black, the other white. Bob Gibson, together with the St. Louis Cardinals, embodied an entire generation's hope for integration at a heated moment in American history. Denny McLain, his adversary, was a crass self-promoter.
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Misleading Title
- By Paul on 01-25-19
By: Sridhar Pappu
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Ahead of the Curve
- Inside the Baseball Revolution
- By: Brian Kenny
- Narrated by: Brian Kenny
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people who resist logical thought in baseball preach "tradition" and "respecting the game". But many of baseball's traditions go back to the 19th century, when the pitcher's job was to provide the batter with a ball he could hit and fielders played without gloves. Instead of fearing change, Brian Kenny wants fans to think critically, reject outmoded groupthink, and embrace the changes that have come with the "sabermetric era".
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Wonderful detail on baseballs past and future
- By Bradley on 07-27-16
By: Brian Kenny
What listeners say about Our Game
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- arleneshapiro21
- 06-26-12
Basic information
While the book is somewhat outdated and doesn't reflect some of the events of the last 20 years, including 4 new franchises, the PED scandals, one franchise move, and the strike of '94, it is a very good primer to explain how baseball and professional baseball in particular got where it has.
It is a very good overview of the first 150 years of our national pastime. I would love to see an update. The one thing that I'd particularly want to see is the emergence of SABR and the effects that "Advanced Baseball Metrics" (aka SABRmetrics) has had on the game and the evaluation of some of its personalities.
On the other hand, a look at Kenesaw Mountain Landis gives a good picture of the horrors that a bad commissioner can perpetrate; it is nice to know why the Oakland Athletics use an elephant as a mascot; there is a story behind why the Cincinnati Reds were called the "Redlegs" for a period; and how some of the, seemingly, oddball rules came to be.
I do have to mark the narrator down, considerably. He mispronounced so many names that it was driving me crazy. Also, there was some baseball terminology that he didn't make flow. While he does have a very listenable voice, and I have enjoyed other books that he has read, his lack of knowledge about this most American of sports should have precluded him from doing the narration, or he should at least have gotten a new coach.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Hanna
- 07-25-12
Learn The Names
What did you like best about Our Game? What did you like least?
Interesting History Lesson
What didn’t you like about Grover Gardner’s performance?
Slow and Tedious, but the worst was his continual mispronunciation of players names. It is especially annoying when he does it with a really famous guy. BOO
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1 person found this helpful
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- Z. England
- 06-30-16
This book is long on detail and short on big ideas
If you could sum up Our Game in three words, what would they be?
If you are a stat person and want a reasonably succinct chronological history of baseball facts and figures this is an excellent book. If you are interested in the big social and cultural themes of baseball then there are far better books.
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- Donald D. Destino
- 09-09-16
Nothing compelling
Tries to hit every notable highlight of 160 years of baseball by simply mentioning every highlight without a single example of insight. ...and then the 27 Yankees were good and then Lou Gehrig died and then Maris hit 61 and then pitchers dominated for a while and then Carleton Fisk hit an exciting home run... No story behind the story.
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