BOOK RELEASE: The Father of Baseball: A Biography of Henry Chadwick
We are entering a new century of baseball. Let's get the 1st century right.
November 15, 2007 -- In the fall of 1856, Henry Chadwick, a British born journalist, like a lightening bolt was struck with a stunning idea. On his way home from a cricket match he was covering for the New York Times, he watched a baseball match between the Eagle and Gotham Nines of New York and realized, because of its ruggedness and quick action, that this was the game that could become the "national sport for Americans." Henry Chadwick became both The Father of Baseball and The Father of Sports Journalism from that moment forward. 150 years later, Andrew Schiff relives the life of Henry Chadwick through The Father of Baseball: A Biography of Henry Chadwick.
It's difficult to imagine a time when America had no sports to call its own. Author Andrew Schiff, an adjunct history professor in NY, has captured the personality and essence of the genius and visionary who helped make baseball America's National Pastime. Just as America would develop its own writers, artists and music, it would also develop its own game, one that would reflect the temperament and personality of this emerging nation Ц all of which was lived and breathed through Henry Chadwick.
"The author tracked Chadwick's life by contacting the New York Public Library, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Society for American Baseball Research, the University of London, and countless other sources. Schiff turned his fascination with a name he first heard when he was eighteen years old into an excellent book," says Mediabistro.com .
Chadwick wrote for some of the most important journals and baseball guides of the time: The New York Clipper, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Eagle, Ball Player's Chronicle , the Beadle Dime Base Ball Guide and The Spalding Baseball Guide. Schiff revives Henry ChadwickТs greatest achievements in the movement of baseball, and retells the story from the beginning, all while our country is moving into the next century of baseball.
Even as modern baseball has grappled with its moral and ethical struggles, from the substance abuses of the 1980s, to the gambling of Pete Rose, and most recently with today's steroid issue, America can still hold the essence of innocence hear the echoes of Chadwick's calls for propriety and truth from the nineteenth century. April 20th, 2008 will be the 100th Anniversary of ChadwickТs death. The centennial mark will be gifted with the release of Andrew SchiffТs biography in January 2008.
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