Before multimillion-dollar salaries, luxury boxes, and player strikes became synonymous with professional sports, there existed the belief in playing simply "for the love of the game." Nothing captures that spirit better than these twenty classic pieces about America's favorite pastime.

Collected here are the writings of Ring Lardner, Zane Grey, the Giants' immortal Christy Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Finley Peter Dunne (who for a time was America's most popular humorist after Mark Twain), Burt Standish (creator of that all-American hero, Frank Merriwell), and many more. Baseball's golden era may have long since passed, but in the pages of Great American Baseball Stories, you can still sit in the bleachers for a nickel.

Relive the golden era of baseball with timeless classics from:
Albert G. Spalding
Henry Chadwick
Ernest Lawrence Thayer
Grantland Rice
Sol White
Brig. Gen. Fredrick Funston
Zane Grey
Candy Cummings
Alfred H. Spink
Burt L. Standish
Lester Chadwick
Finley Peter Dunne
Christy Mathewson
Damon Runyon
Grover Cleveland Alexander
Gerald Beaumont
Ring Lardner
Hugh Fullerton
Ralph D. Blanpied
Charles E. Van Loan
P.G. Wodehouse