Play Ball! (Primary Sources Edition)

Have you ever used current events to pique students’ interest? Leveraged your students’ hobbies to guide which primary sources you offer up for analysis? Do you have baseball fans in your classroom?

The National Pastime in the National Archives coverWe’ve got a brand new resource full of primary source documents, photographs, video, audio, and more. It’s a free eBook we published just in time for Major League Baseball’s Opening Day this Monday, April 1. (Or Sunday March 31 if you prefer Opening Night!)

“Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives” is available for iPad or as an ePub for iPhone, Android, or eReaders. It tells the story of baseball in America through the records preserved here at the National Archives.

It covers a range of topics and time periods in American history. You could use the primary sources that we included when you teach about:

  • Patents
  • The Federal policy of Native American assimilation in the early 20th century
  • World War I
  • World War II
  • Japanese Internment
  • Civil Rights
  • Equal access and opportunity for women
  • Immigration
  • Contracts
  • Congressional hearings
Chapter from Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives
The “Baseball is for Everyone” chapter includes primary sources about Native American boarding schools, Japanese internment camps, Latin American immigration, and soldiers in conflicts around the world.
Chapter from Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives
The World War I chapter includes draft registration cards from players like Babe Ruth, who listed his place of occupation as Fenway Park.
This is the latest of three eBooks available from the National Archives. “The Meaning and Making of Emancipation” illustrates the efforts of the enslaved, free, white and black Americans by whom slavery was abolished; and “Exploring the United States Constitution” connects records in the holdings of the National Archives to the principles found in the Constitution. All of our eBooks are available online for free.

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