Baseball, Oklahoma From Binger to the Big Leagues

Any baseball fan-and even the curious onlooker-will easily recognize legendary names like Mickey Mantle and Johnny Bench. What they might not know is that these two National Baseball Hall of Famers, along with five others, share Oklahoma roots. As do icons like World Series hero Joe Carter, and more recent phenoms like top prospect Jackson Holliday. Oklahoma boasts an incredibly rich baseball history—from hosting minor league teams to universities producing powerhouse teams to a baseball summer camp run by the same family across generations—and Baseball, Oklahoma is the first book to tell Sooner baseball's often fantastic story through the words of the players themselves. Drawing on more than thirty interviews with Oklahomans who achieved incredible success on the diamond, Doug Wedge provides first-hand insights from the pitchers firing the fastballs, the batters digging in at the plate, and the fielders catching the balls. Filled with stories of aspiration, fame, and failure, his book captures the character of these players and their days on the field, exploring their backgrounds growing up in the Sooner State and their experiences competing at the highest level, even on the brightest stage in the game: the World Series. In addition, Wedge delves into institutions like the University of Oklahoma baseball teams that made five consecutive appearances in the College World Series in the 1970s and the Chandler Baseball Camp that provided formative experiences for thousands of Oklahomans across five decades. As different as each of these baseball standouts' stories may be, they are all distinctly Oklahoman. Combined, their stories present more than sixty years of direct experiences of what it's like to play baseball in the Sooner State, and to build a uniquely Oklahoman foundation for achieving Major League success.