Robert Elias

Nominated for: Sporting News Best Book Award

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

... this book is a thought-provoking, multifaceted perspective on the state of the game and our collective national psyche that offers a surprisingly varied mix of styles and themes. ... any serious baseball fan -- or American -- would easily find at least a half dozen essays in this book that really speak to them.
- Elysian Fields Quarterly

...a coherent and comprehensive look at the numerous contradictions that have made the American dream such an opaque concept when viewed through the lenses of race, ethnicity, class, and gender...should appeal to scholars concerned about symbolism, language, culture, and sport, as well as to the baseball fan.
- Rhetoric & Public Affairs

. . . Elias notes that baseball offers a common denominator that cuts across conflicting ideologies. Baseball provides and also illustrates some of the best that America has to offer. It also features some of the more disturbing characteristics of society. . . an enlightening book.
- ForeWord Magazine

For a closer look at the cultural import of the game as it is now played and marketed, thoughtful dads (and others) can turn to Baseball and the American Dream . . .
- Publisher's Weekly

SELECTED CONTENTS:

Prologue ,The Missing Ball Thrower, Laura Ward

Introduction: American Dreams, Fit for A Fractured Society: Baseball and the American Dream, Robert Elias

PART I. DREAMS OF DIVERSITY: RACE,ETHNICITY AND BASEBALL
1. The Greatest Season: From Jackie Robinson to Sammy Sosa, Roger Kahn
2. Jackie Robinson's Legacy: Baseball, Race, and Politics , Peter Dreier
3. The Beauty of the Game, Dusty Baker
4. Sammy Sosa Meets Horatio Alger: Latin Ballplayers Players and the American Success Myth, Samuel O. Regalado
5. From Hardball to Hard Time and Back, Orlando Cepeda
6. Borders & Shangri-La: Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez & Me, Andrei Codrescu
7. California Baseball's Mixed Multitudes, Joel Franks
8. The Road to Cooperstown: Japanese American Baseball ,1899-1999, Kerry Yo Nakagawa
9. From San Francisco Sandlots to the Big Leagues: Babe Pinelli, John J. Pinelli
10. The Common Dream Examined, William Edwards

PART II. MATERIAL DREAMS: CLASS, ECONOMICS AND BASEBALL
11. Left Capitola for a Fate Unknown: Harry Hooper, Paul J. Zingg
12. Past [Im]Perfect: Mythology and Shoeless Joe, Suzanne Griffith Prestien
13. The Shot Heard 'Round the World: America at Midcentury, Jules Tygiel
14. Beyond the Dugout: Reassessing the Baseball Dream, George McGlynn
15. America's Two Realms, Randy M.Torrijos
16. The Ring, Thomas J. Stillman
17. Luring Teams, Building Ballparks, Jeremy Howell
18. A New Golden Age? An Evolving Baseball Dream, Leonard Koppett

PART III. GENDERED DREAMS: WOMEN AND BASEBALL
19. To Elevate the Game: Women and Early Baseball, Darryl Brock and Robert Elias
20. Women, Baseball, and the American Dream, Gai Ingham Berlage
21. A League of Our Own, Lois J. Youngen
22. Dream or Nightmare? Baseball and the Gender Order, Anne R. Roschelle
23. The Tune Plays the Same, Joan Ryan