Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball, traces the game's origins from its earliest days as a vehicle for gambling. He shows how the New York version of the game prevailed and explains the crucial role that a small religious cult played in shaping baseball's creation myth. Colorful figures such as Jim Creighton, perhaps the first true professional ballplayer, and Albert Spalding, the ballplayer-entrepreneur who chose Abner Doubleday as baseball's father, made the game our national pastime��he perfect sport for nineteenth-century America, a land of glory and greed.
No matter how much you know about the history of baseball, Baseball in the Garden of Eden will surprise, enlighten, and fascinate you.
