Baseball’s Early Days

I get a bad rap from the other bloggers here about being a barefoot hippie for listening to NPR but they had a really good interview yesterday at lunch and it fits perfectly for a beautiful warm spring day like today.  John Thorn was on talking about his book “Baseball in the Garden of Eden” where he gives accounts of the game being played all the way back in 1735, long before that damn yankee Doubleday was even born.  Some of the more interesting points he made that I didn’t know was that baseball was originally a boys game played on the farms and would have never caught on if men in the cities hadn’t started betting on everything from how a single player would do at bat to the outcome of the game.  Stadiums even had a special section in the stands where the bookies sat and you could walk up and make your bets.  Now it would be fitting to bring this back to Turner Field and would make the Golden Moon Casino Pavilion a lot more entertaining.  If you have time today I’d recommended you let this interview play in the background while you are watching the tournament this afternoon cause if you’re reading this blog your productivity is already a few points below normal.

The ‘Secret History’ of Baseball’s Earliest Days