it’s a beautiful day for baseball: the national pastime in the 1960s

Enjoy a fascinating trip back in time when baseball was the undisputed National Pastime and nearly every spring or summer day was seemingly a beautiful day for baseball. An inside look at the sport - on and off the field - and the men who played the game during a monumental decade.

Baseball enjoyed unparalleled popularity in the Sixties. The game was played by millions of Americans while millions more followed professional baseball at the ballpark, on transistor radios and in the daily newspapers. The story lines captured the nation’s imagination then and still resonate today. Mazeroski’s walk-off homer. Mantle and Maris chasing Ruth’s homer record. Wills surpassing Cobb for the most steals in a season. Koufax’s unprecedented dominance and sudden retirement. Back-to-back triple crowns. The year of the pitcher. The Miracle Mets.

The game’s stars were widely known coast to coast. The sport was played with sound fundamentals as hurlers brushed back hitters and pitched into the late innings, batters hit behind the runner and executed perfect sacrifice bunts, baserunners went hard into second base, and fielders crashed into walls to make seemingly impossible catches. Coupled with the growing infusion of African American and Latino talent, the quality of play had never been stronger. Holding down a position on a big-league club was extraordinarily competitive. Meanwhile, the nation was evolving with ramifications for the game of baseball and its players.