With the official-kinda-sorta start of the MLB season just a few glorious days away, I wanted to share nine more links to cool baseball-history-related sites that I discovered while tooling around the Internet in preparation for my previous post.
(By the way, speaking of MLB’s horrendous three-pronged clusterflock of a season-opening strategery, before we get around to declaring Opening Day to be a national holiday, shouldn’t someone determine which day is actually, ya know, the first day of the season?!?)
OK, I”m back …
Here, then, are nine more fantastic places to spend some time whilst waiting for the Greatest Sport On Earth to begin play again:
1. Rare photos from Dodgertown 1948 (LIFE magazine) — This page features images from the first spring of the Dodgers’ 60-year residency at “Dodgertown” in Vero Beach, Florida. As the into to this section puts it, “The photos here, by LIFE’s George Silk, are marvelous for a number of reasons, not least because, quite simply, they’re just damn good pictures. There is energy in the images, and a genuine playfulness as well as terrific personalities — captured by an acknowledged master of sports photography. ”
2. Baseball photos on Shorpy — Shorpy is an absolute treasure trove of digitized vintage photos from 1850-1950. The baseball section occupies but a small corner of this expansive site – but a most magnificent corner it is.
3. Minor League Baseball History — As this site reminds us, professional baseball isn’t limited to the 30 teams in the American and National leagues. The MiLB’s History section offers a wealth of information culled from the 113-year history of pro baseball’s “other” leagues.
4. National Baseball Hall of Fame — Not nearly as large as many of the other sites in this list, but the HoF site is worth the visit, if for nothing more than to take a stroll down the virtual gallery of plaques.
5. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — Today, the AAGPBL is probably best known for being the inspiration behind league that inspired the 1992 film A League of Their Own. But as this site demonstrates, the historical significance (and continuing legacy) of this league extends far beyond bringing Madonna to the diamond.
6. Ken Burns Baseball — The nation’s preeminent documentary filmmaker turns his lens toward the national pastime. ‘Nuff said.
7. Rotten Tomatoes’ 20 Best Baseball Movies — From Bull Durham (#1) to The Sandlot (#20), this list features more than 30 hours’ worth of fictional onscreen baseball.
8. Goodreads 291 Best Books About Baseball — Once you’ve slept off your film-binge hangover, head to your local library or fire up Amazon and get crackin’ on a few years’ worth of reading.
9. Vintage Base Ball Association — If 17 sites about baseball history have given you the itch to experience firsthand what the game was like in days of yore, this site is a good place to start your search for a local base ball (yep, two words) squad to call your own.
Happy reading, & have a great Opening DayNightSeriesWhatever!
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Photo accompanying this post is from the Library of Congress Flickr account, and is captioned “African American baseball players from Morris Brown College, with boy and another man standing at door, Atlanta, Georgia.” Used here via Creative Commons license.
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