Skip to Main Content

Joyce Sports Research Collection

RBSC's Joyce Sports Research Collection is one of the largest accumulations of sports-related print and manuscript matter in the world, facilitating scholarly inquiry into the history, sociology, and economics of American sports and their antecedents abro

Baseball Books

The Joyce Sports Research Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries houses an extensive collection of older monographs relating to baseball, including many of the field's scarcest titles. Among these are copies of Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (Worcester MA, 1787); Carver's The Book of Sports (Boston, 1834); Van Campen's Base Ball as Viewed by a Muffin (New Bedford MA, 1867); Chadwick's The Game of Base Ball (New York, 1868); Lawson's The Krank (Boston, 1888); Morse's "Sphere and Ash" (Boston, 1888); and Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide (Philadelphia, 1907). All genres of baseball book are represented, including fiction. All items may be searched in the Libraries' online catalog.

Many early baseball books are featured in the digital exhibit listed below.