Customer Reviews

When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870

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With insight, clarity and wit, Ryczek surveys a neglected era of early baseball history, and shows how baseball at its highest levels was transformed from a reasonably polite pastime for amateurs into a rowdy sport dominated by professionals. This first book-length treatment of baseball's post-Civil War era is a must read for anyone who would understand the origins of the professional game.

This book is a thoroughly researched account of the early days of baseball. Mr. Ryczek dutifully illustrates the exciting and often times painful transition of the sport from a loosely organized amateur pastime to an openly professional enterprise.

Ryczek's first work, Blackguards and Red Stockings, was a very strong effort but he outdid himself with this one. His research into baseball during the post-Civil War years is excellent and he tells this fascinating story well. Ryczek's focus is on east coast baseball and this book should be read in concert with more recent ones that have dealt with other regions. But that is by no means a criticism of this excellent work, which ought to be in the library of anyone with a serious interest in nineteenth-century baseball.