Baseball In Springfield

It has been more than half a century since Springfield last hosted minor league baseball. That draught will end at downtown's newly constructed Hammons Field in the spring of 2005, when the Springfield Cardinals of the AA Texas League bring professional baseball back to the Queen City of the Ozarks. The new team will have quite a legacy to fulfill, as the Springfield Cardinals of the Western Association won several pennants those many years ago, and brought to town such legendary baseball names as Branch Rickey, Joe Garagiola, and Stan Musial. Before the Cardinals came teams like the Midgets, Reds, and Merchants, and a rich tradition of professional and semi-pro baseball dating back to the mid-1880s. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources and complimented by over 100 vintage images, Baseball in Springfield is must-have for those ready to discover the historic connection this city has to the national pastime.

From Darkroom to Dugout is filled with behind the scenes stories of minor league baseball, as seen through the eyes of team photographer Mark Harrell. Read how the author took his childhood hobby of photography and weaved it together with his lifelong love of the game of baseball, creating an opportunity to spend 15 plus years as the official photographer of the Springfield Cardinals, the AA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals.Harrell tells how he occasionally shagged fly balls during Cardinals batting practice, almost knocking out their number one draft pick with a thrown ball. Through his eyes you can feel the excitement he felt during the first game in Springfield history when St. Louis came to town with Pujols and company to play an exhibition game. Or how great it was to stand close to Stan Musial before he threw out the first pitch.Harrell has photographed dozens of players on their way up to the big leagues. Hear how preserving Cardinals baseball history is vitally important to him and how photography has allowed him to build lifelong friendships with players, coaches, and fans.Take a journey with Mark, strolling from darkroom to dugout.

Disapproving scolds. Sexist condescension. Odd theories about the effect of exercise on reproductive organs. Though baseball began as a gender-neutral sport, girls and women of the nineteenth century faced many obstacles on their way to the diamond. Yet all-female nines took the field everywhere. Debra A. Shattuck pulls from newspaper accounts and hard-to-find club archives to reconstruct a forgotten era in baseball history. Her fascinating social history tracks women players who organized baseball clubs for their own enjoyment and even found roster spots on men's teams. Entrepreneurs, meanwhile, packaged women's teams as entertainment, organizing leagues and barnstorming tours. If the women faced financial exploitation and indignities like playing against men in women's clothing, they and countless ballplayers like them nonetheless staked a claim to the nascent national pastime. Shattuck explores how the determination to take their turn at bat thrust female players into narratives of the women's rights movement and transformed perceptions of women's physical and mental capacity. Vivid and eye-opening, Bloomer Girls is a first-of-its-kind portrait of America, its women, and its game.