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