Major League Baseball is the toughest level of the sport, with the world’s best players and highest quality of play. But contrary to what modern fans used to on-demand scores and video might think, it wasn’t always this way.
Baseball researcher and author – and erstwhile copier salesman — Scott Simkus makes the case in his new book Outsider Baseball: The Weird World Of Hardball on the Fringe 1876-1950 that baseball was a different world in the sprawling early days of the sport.
There were foreign barnstorming teams, clowns, bearded cults, and, pre-Jackie Robinson, integrated play.
Scott Simkus’ book is published by Chicago Review Press.
