"Readers [get] a box seat at the game that became a national obsession."--London Review of Books. "[Shows] just how compelling original documents can be when shaped into a narrative ...that includes tales of attitudes, alliances, and deceits, as well as the development of performances, rules, and equipment."--Canadian Journal of the History of Sport. This compilation of 120 primary writings documents baseball's first century, from a loosely organized village social event to the arrival of the National League. Collecting from a wide range of sources-including newspaper accounts, letters, folk poetry, songs, and annual guides-Dean A. Sullivan of Fairfax, Virginia, progresses chronologically from the earliest known baseball reference (1825) to the creation of the Doubleday Myth (1908). Benjamin G. Rader, author of Baseball: A History of America's Game is a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.