Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Today the World Series begins. The only way to find out what was going on in sports, before radio, television and the internet, was to read the newspaper. Admittedly, my knowledge of current sports is minimal. My knowledge of sports history is absolutely nil. Where could I go to get a taste of historic sports information?

I looked in the Atlanta Historic Newspapers, which is a part of the Digital Library of Georgia. This is available without going through GALILEO . I searched for "world series". I put the phrase in quotes to hold it together. I didn't want to search for world and for series. 173 articles were retrieved. Most of the articles were dated late October, in the 1907-1911 time frame. To read the articles, I did need to download the DjVu plug-in.

While I was reading the sports pages, I noticed mention of Marist events. Marist is an Atlanta Catholic school that was founded for boys in 1901. Their sports activities were prominent on the sports pages of the turn of the century newspapers. Fascinating to read how excited people were over high school sports. But then this is the south.

Wandering while searching is an occupational hazard. One search leads to another. Go read about your favorite team from the turn of the century! You might be surprised at what you'll discover. Digital Library of Georgia has other newspapers from Georgia available.

-kss