The National League: A History
New York: Gallery Books, 1986. First Printing thus [stated]. Hardcover. Format is approximately 9.5 inches by 12.25 inches. 192 pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations (some in color), Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Contents include: In the Beginning; The Modern Game; The League Takes to the Air; Innovation and Upheaval; Dodger Dynasty; The Unpredictable Decade; Untraditional Seventies; and Mounting Figures of the 1980's. A history of the oldest surviving professional sports league describes how baseball has been shaped by war, television, agents, airplanes, and, especially, players and includes important achievements by noted figures. Traces the history of the National League from its early years to the present day, highlighting the famous plays, crucial games, and memorable personalities of league baseball. An informal but informative survey, with more than 200 illustrations that allow everyone to relive the great days of America's senior league. Zoss' professional life has always balanced between prose and music, sometimes weighted heavily to one or the other, as during the 1980s into the 1990s, when he authored or co-authored over twenty five nonfiction books. Zoss has won several awards for his prose and is an International PEN short story award winner and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow of Creative Writing. These included, with historian John S. Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough, cited by The New York Times as one of the 50 greatest baseball books of all times. Since 1964 John D. Bowman has been a freelance editor and writer. The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) of 1871?1875 (often called simply the "National Association"), the NL is sometimes called the Senior Circuit, in contrast to MLB's other league, the American League, which was founded 25 years later and is called the "Junior Circuit". After two years of conflict in a "baseball war" of 1901?1902, the two eight-team leagues agreed in a "peace pact" to recognize each other as "major leagues". As part of this agreement, they drafted rules regarding player contracts, prohibiting "raiding" of rosters, and regulating relationships with minor leagues and lower level clubs. Each league established a team in the nation's largest metropolis of New York City, and the league champions of 1903 arranged to compete against each other in the new professional baseball championship tournament with the inaugural "World Series" that Fall of 1903, succeeding earlier similar national series in previous decades since the 1880s. After the 1904 champions failed to reach a similar agreement, the two leagues also formalized the new World Series tournament beginning in 1905 as an arrangement between the leagues themselves. National League teams have won 51 of the 117 World Series championships contested from 1903 to 2021. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Major League, National League, World Series, Pennant Races, All-Star Game, John McGraw, Baseball, Home Run, Stan Musial, Professional Sports, Professional Athletes
ISBN: 0831763132
[Book #84541]
Price: $55.00