1920s American history
1926 baseball
1926 World Series
A01=Thomas Wolf
American history
American league
Author_Thomas Wolf
Babe Ruth
Baseball and Society
baseball book
baseball cultural history
baseball during the 1920s
baseball history
betting scandal
Billy Sunday
Branch Rickey
Cardinals fans
Category=NHB
Category=SCX
Category=SFC
Chattanooga White Sox
Chicago American Giants
Coolidge Prosperity
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eq_history
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Grover Cleveland Alexander
History of Baseball
History of the 1920s
Jazz age history
Kennesaw Mountain Landis
Lou Gehrig
national league
Negro Leagues
Negro Leagues baseball
New York Yankees
pennant race
Pete Alexander
Prohibition
Rogers Hornsby
Rube Foster
Satchel Paige
sports gambling
sports history
Sports in America
St. Louis cardinals
the Jazz Age
Tris Speaker
Ty Cobb
World Series
Yankees fans
Product details
- ISBN 9781496235787
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2025
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In the mid-1920s, America was in the throes of exuberant excess and clashing social change. It was the era of Prohibition and speakeasies; the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan; popular evangelists, including ex-ballplayer Billy Sunday; a fascination with dangerous stunts like pole-sitting and wing-walking; incredible personal feats and new personalities such as Charles Lindbergh, Gertrude Ederle, and Mae West; and the advancement of innovative forms of entertainment-jazz, motion pictures, the radio. It was the Golden Age of Sports. But it was also a decade of corruption amid the ominous signs of economic collapse.
In 1926 baseball stars of an earlier era still played major roles in the game: Veteran pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander was the hero of the 1926 World Series; Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker faced explosive allegations of game-fixing; Babe Ruth’s mysterious illness and dismal 1925 season convinced many observers that Ruth was finished-over the hill. Meanwhile, new stars like Tony Lazzeri and Lou Gehrig had arrived on the scene, and the Negro Leagues were at the height of their popularity and success with Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants winning the Colored World Series of 1926. One of America’s most ardent fans cheered from the White House-not the taciturn president, Calvin Coolidge, but his vibrant and well-liked wife, Grace.
Focusing on the Cardinals and Yankees and their dramatic seven-game battle in the 1926 World Series, Baseball in the Roaring Twenties tells the story of key players such as Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby, the Negro Leagues season, and how baseball and the inextricably linked aspects of American life-Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the rise of sports gambling-converged that year.
In 1926 baseball stars of an earlier era still played major roles in the game: Veteran pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander was the hero of the 1926 World Series; Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker faced explosive allegations of game-fixing; Babe Ruth’s mysterious illness and dismal 1925 season convinced many observers that Ruth was finished-over the hill. Meanwhile, new stars like Tony Lazzeri and Lou Gehrig had arrived on the scene, and the Negro Leagues were at the height of their popularity and success with Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants winning the Colored World Series of 1926. One of America’s most ardent fans cheered from the White House-not the taciturn president, Calvin Coolidge, but his vibrant and well-liked wife, Grace.
Focusing on the Cardinals and Yankees and their dramatic seven-game battle in the 1926 World Series, Baseball in the Roaring Twenties tells the story of key players such as Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby, the Negro Leagues season, and how baseball and the inextricably linked aspects of American life-Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the rise of sports gambling-converged that year.
Thomas Wolf is the author of The Called Shot: Babe Ruth, the Chicago Cubs, and the Unforgettable Major League Baseball Season of 1932 (Nebraska, 2020), finalist for the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research, and coauthor, with Patricia Bryan, of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland.
