Peeking through the Knothole Volume 5

Peeking through the Knothole, Volume 5: Essays on Baseball from Various Viewpoints, 1856–1940, features eleven essays on various subjects in the early history of baseball. The first three essays describe professional female baseball players from Kansas City who played from 1899 to 1929, deaf ballplayers at the Kansas School for the Deaf and in Kansas City at the turn of the century, and the story of a baseball team organized by ragtime composer Scott Joplin. These are followed by two essays on the support of cities for baseball. One essay is about early baseball and the historic baseball stadium still in use in Sedalia, Missouri. The other is about the first two years of minor league baseball in Topeka, Kansas in 1886 and 1887. Bud Fowler played for the 1886 club, and Goldsby’s Golden Giants of 1887 is considered one of the best minor league clubs of the era. The next essays consider competition for fans between baseball and cricket and between baseball and early American football, as well as the role baseball and basketball played in the early development of the state and federal highway system in Kansas. The final two essays recount two unusual baseball stories. The first describes how towns in Kansas came to be named after major league players on the 1886 St. Louis Browns. The second describes the circumstances surrounding a winter baseball game involving major league players that took place in California during the flu pandemic of 1918–1919 in which everyone was required to wear masks.