Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era - Tapa dura

"Like a quickly paced, mid-season game on a sunny summer afternoon, Charles C. Alexander's book provides another comfortable examination of the national pastime... he demonstrates a thorough command of the narrative nature of the game itself and a solid ability to find meaning in the play of men." -- American Historical Review "Alexander follows his excellent biographies... with this engrossing look at baseball in the Depression Era. His running narrative of seasons and games is a welcome adjunct to his explorations of more serious themes." -- Dallas Morning News "Alexander writes for baseball junkies, peppering his prose with baseball slang and laboring through game-by-game series recaps." -- San Francisco Chronicle "The beautiful dustjacket alone is almost worth the purchase price." -- ESPN Magazine "Some fine scholarship." -- Natural History "A good overview." -- Library Journal "A worthwhile slice of baseball history for devoted fans." -- Booklist "[I]t is Alexander's descriptions of day-to-day living for the average ballplayer that are most fascinating -- where they lived, how they earned extra money, their traveling and lodging conditions." -- USA Today Baseball Weekly "Flat-out entertaining, sometimes-touching baseball anecdotes." -- Mark Luce, Chicago Tribune "Baseball history does not get much better than this study of the Depression years... Everything is here: the heroes, the statistics, the personalities... a model of scholarship." -- Choice "A worthy addition to the sports history canon, providing a valuable secondary source for anyone with an interest in the game's evolution." -- West Singletary, History "Written in a lively, traditional narrative style rich in colorful illustrative anecdotes... enjoyable and informative." -- Journal of American History "[It chronicles] important periods in the history of baseball, and [It] will thoroughly engage that sport's aficionados." -- Jack E. Davis, American Studies

Breaking the Slump is the engrossing story of baseball during the 1930s, when the National Pastime came of age as a business, an entertainment, and a passion, and when the teams of the American and National Leagues fielded perhaps the greatest rosters in the history of the game. Whether as rookies, stars in their prime, or legends on the wane, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio all left their mark on the game and on the American imagination in the decade before America's entry into the World War II. In one remarkable year, 1934, the entire starting lineup of the American League All-Stars consisted of future Hall of Famers. This surfeit of talent provided much needed entertainment to a nation struggling through economic hardship on an enormous scale. In the face of the Great Depression, noted baseball historian Charles C. Alexander shows, Organized Baseball underwent an array of changes that defined the structure and operation of the game well into the postwar decades. The 1930s witnessed the advent of night baseball, the flowering of an extensive and, in some cases, controversial minor-league system of "farm clubs," and the exploitation of the relatively new broadcast medium of radio. Power brokers such as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and owners Branch Rickey and "Colonel" Jacob Ruppert oversaw these and other developments even as they retained other traditional aspects of the game. As it had since the 1880s, the reserve clause continued to limit the salaries and mobility of ballplayers, subjecting them to the will of ownership to a degree unfathomable today. And Organized Baseball remained racially segregated throughout the 1930s, as the Negro leagues operated largely beyond the notice of white baseball fans. While tracing these and other organizational developments, Alexander keeps his focus on the daily experience of the ballplayers. What was it like for young men trying to make their way as professional ballplayers in an economy that offered few prospects for them otherwise? What kind of conditions did they have to deal with in terms of playing facilities, transportation, lodging, and relations with their employers? And what about the play itself? Alexander offers an expert appraisal of how the ballplayers and the quality of the game they played differed from today's.Americans have periodically been reminded of baseball's extraordinary capacity to enrich and enliven the national spirit during hard times. Breaking the Slump is a vivid portrait of the great game and its cultural significance during America's hardest times.