Ballplayers on Stage

"Travis Stern explores the relationship between professional baseball and professional theater in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that examining theater from this era helps us better understand baseball's development and its transformation from a strictly working-class attraction to an entertainment of the emerging middle class in the US. Stern examines case studies of five players from baseball's pre-Babe Ruth "deadball" era: Cap Anson, Mike "King" Kelly, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Rube Waddell, with a concluding study of Babe Ruth himself. While one draw of theatrical performance was the additional profit it promised the players during the off-season, the stage also offered these men an opportunity to take a more active role in shaping their public image. Thus, this book offers not only an intersectional historical study of baseball and theater, but also insight into the creation of celebrity in early twentieth-century America"--