Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game

Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. In Baseball in the Garden of Eden John Thorn reveals the real history of the game.

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.