Play Ball!: The Story of Little League Baseball

On any given spring evening, 360,000 children around the world can be found on the dusty mounds and grassy fields of a Little League field. With more than four million people playing or volunteering in Little League games every year, Little League is the institutional rite of passage into the quintessential American pastime. Play Ball! charts Little League's history from the earliest days and shows how, in many respects, its history parallels America's history. A microcosm of American society, Little League reflects and is affected by cultural, political, and historical trends. Today, Little League is played on 12,000 fields in every U.S. state and in 103 other countries on six continents, and The Little League Baseball World Series, played annually in Williamsport, is watched by crowds of 40,000 each year in person - and by more than ten million on ABC's Wide World of Sports. The authors were given full access to the Little League Baseball archives and have created a fully illustrated and comprehensive history.