The emergence of baseball as the ""national pastime"" established the dynamics of spectator sports. Evolving in an urban landscape, the game attracted a dedicated fan base and enshrined the sports hero as a national celebrity.

The game's allure was colored by the ethnic ambitions of the players and their supporters. Ethnic tensions were magnified when players began to see the game as a vehicle for individual rather than group achievement. The effect Irish-American players had on how the game was played and their support of Jim Crow culture shaped baseball into the next century.

Players' salaries and off-season occupations were not overlooked by the public, who questioned their entitlement to the fruits of notoriety and derided their gratifying lifestyles. This book examines the development of baseball as 19th-century popular culture and as an institution that reinforced ideas about race, masculinity and American exceptionalism.