From the social impact of baseball to how the game shifted, learn about the history of the early years of Illinois baseball.
Robert D. Sampson is Editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and taught US history at Millikin University and the University of Illinois. His first book, John L O’Sullivan and His Times, the biography of a 19th-century journalist who popularized the term “manifest destiny,” appeared in 2003. Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins: Inside Early Baseball in Illinois, published last spring emerged from nearly a decade of research on the game in Illinois between 1865 and 1870. It goes beyond the mechanics of the game to engage its social impact and the underlying tensions leading to a shift in baseball’s goals and purposes in those early years. More than 1,000 organized clubs rose during those years, including the Champaign Empire Base Ball Club as well as clubs in Decatur, Arcola, Danville, Bloomington, Springfield, and many other places, some so small that they no longer appear on the map. The sometimes distorted origins of baseball, difficulties in obtaining and keeping playing fields, the rudimentary equipment (no gloves), and the banning of play in some communities paint a vivid portrait of baseball’s early years.
Conveniently located at the corner of Race and Green in downtown Urbana.
