"Despite its reputation as pastime, there's nothing casual - there never has been - about major league baseball. And if no other sport has so fully embraced the American ethos, neither has any other game struggled so publicly with the country's self-image." "Baseball demonstrated early an obsession for excellence, as championship squads laid claim to the title of world's best long before play spread beyond the Midwest. And decades before Jackie Robinson could dash the hopes of Cap Anson and later segregationists, the game was hailed as a model of the republic (an ironic half-truth) and was said to embody, in its occasional veneration of the minority Irish, Jewish, and Italian ballplayer, the spirit of unfettered opportunity." "In explaining the historical and social forces that determined organized baseball's cultural character, the attributes of which were institutional by the time the AL was formed, this work reveals what's so American about the American pastime."--Jacket.