Baseball is America

Origins and History: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

by Victor Alexander Baltov, Jr.


Formats

Softcover
£13.49
£9.90
Hardcover
£22.99
£15.30
Softcover
£9.90

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 28/04/2010

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 412
ISBN : 9781452004860
Format : Hardcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 412
ISBN : 9781452004853

About the Book

America’s Favorite Pastime with its foreign taproot evolved into the modern game. Baseball is traced in the 364-page book from its European origins plus much deeper sources. Cultural beginnings, including the rally monkey, hot dog, peanut and anthems provide historical perspective. The American spirit is captured through baseball, beating to the rhythm of the American culture, sometimes as its direction, but most times its reflection. The goodness of the game exists in both its players serving as role models for the youth, with the Yankee Clipper leading the charge, plus inducing positive progressive change highlighted by the 1947color barrier penetration by Jackie. Type and character makeup of leadership in America and baseball is positioned as integral to the cultural socialization process. Christian religious tenets previously employed in traditional America have been metaphorically “Billy-Goated” out of the field of play. An orchestrated reshaping from its Founding principles using education and media as hypnotic tools promoting secular-humanist ideals and values has fundamentally transformed America into a nation ripe for governance by the New World Order as One Global Family. The reader’s thought process is directed to answering the question as to what is the American way? The shear ugliness of baseball bore its soul to the American public during the Synthetic Era as characterized by serpentine-type Congressional hearings involving performance-enhancing-drug use. The author boldly declares America to be a nation on some sort of drug indifferent to toxic societal effects and meritocracy interference. Cultural issues including an intellectual history of PEDs, their affects on performance and leakage into the tributaries plus the evolution of the Promethean Project are well documented. Comparisons are made between the sins of Shoeless Joe and Charlie Hustle and the typical Synthetic Era ballplayer. Hazards of playing ball are probed by comparison to perceived dangers of hit-by-pitch and the Iraq War, shark attacks and automobile accidents. Political perspectives are injected into the read using metaphors, baseball-speak and satire.


About the Author

Victor Alexander Baltov, Jr. is an empirical writer offering baseball views from a “natural” player’s perspective. Diamond time over six different decades was accumulated as an extremely competitive pitcher, center-fielder and shortstop. The author steps into the metaphorical batter’s box of chin music as a lone crusader in the quest to right a major wrong of society, normalized acceptance of cheating in baseball, in the vein of Curt Flood and free agency and Jackie and racism. Nicknamed “Balls” on his mid-70’s Cowboy baseball team, his ball playing experiences in the Garden State, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Florida provide metaphorical field-level and game-speed perspective on culture war issues. Houston, an epicenter of synthetic ballplayers of all ages, was the stage for both later life senior ball as a player and youth ball as a coach. The author was a #1 overall draft pick as a pitcher in the same college league that the Rocket participated in and was not. He tallied just shy of 200 amateur mound victories against fewer that 60 defeats. Being an offspring of a Daughter of the American Revolution who worked in a high security position in the FDR administration and a father born into the Christian cleansing campaign known as the Bolshevik Revolution, his convictions are deep-seated with baseball viewed as a strike zone of supernatural versus Marxian materialistic ideologies. Intimate knowledge of the sources of synthetic enhancement, the Hitler and Stalin regimes, exists. His father grew up under the harsh brutality of the Lenin/Stalin Communist regimes and fought in Operation Barbarossa during WW II against the Nazis and as a Polish Combatant fought against the Soviets and what they stood for as a rogue warrior. The personalities of the author’s university mascots, Cowboys and Mavericks and Dead Ball Era grandpa is reflected in his writings. His focus is on Founding principles with a value system weighting experiences over material possessions. His personity is the epitome of the anti-Marx!