One Nation Under Baseball
How the 1960s Collided with the National Pastime
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
One Nation Under Baseball highlights the intersection between American society and America’s pastime during the 1960s, when the hallmarks of the sport—fairness, competition, and mythology—came under scrutiny. John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro examine the events of the era that reshaped the game: the Koufax and Drysdale million-dollar holdout, the encroachment of television on newspaper coverage, the changing perception of ballplayers from mythic figures to overgrown boys, the arrival of the everyman Mets and their free-spirited fans, and the lawsuit brought against team owners by Curt Flood.
One Nation Under Baseball brings to life the seminal figures of the era—including Bob Gibson, Marvin Miller, Tom Seaver, and Dick Young—richly portraying their roles during a decade of flux and uncertainty.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this fascinating history, John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro discover that nothing in America escaped the social upheaval of the 1960s—including baseball. From Kennedy-era optimism to the gold-standard Yankees to the war, protests, and assassinations that rocked American society, the authors get to the bottom of how this revolutionary climate affected the game. We were blown away reading about New Journalism sportswriters changing the face of sportswriting and players fighting for more control—all during a single decade. Florio and Shapiro pay particular attention to the emerging generation of Black players during the ’60s, like Dick Allen and Curt Flood—whose attitudes had more in common with Muhammad Ali than Jackie Robinson. One Nation Under Baseball sheds new light on a decade where the only constant, both inside and outside the game, was change.
