What is behind America’s enduring love affair with professional baseball, football, and basketball? Big Leagues traces the evolution of these team sports from unlikely beginnings to multibillion-dollar businesses that still arouse widespread passion. We love these sports, Fox argues, because they evolve within long, repeating cycles that leave them stable at their cores. Ballplayers, like their games, don’t change much. They remain children with a ball and juvenile in their attitudes toward sex, drink, and drugs, as well as toward superstitions and practical jokes.

Fox candidly illustrates the shenanigans of old-time and newer players, contradicts some accepted wisdom on the origins and early histories of the games, and includes a controversial account of the history of black athletes in America. He also surveys the world of fandom, examines the “big money” explosion, and dares to project the future.

Stephen Fox is an independent scholar who lives in Massachusetts. He has written such highly praised books as The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators and Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America.

"One of the most important sports books to be written in the 1990s."—New York Observer

"Fox has skillfully mined the vast and growing literature of sport history. . . . Today’s suffering fans will enjoy this book. . . . provocative—and lively."—Boston Sunday Globe