Campus News

New book looks at ‘herocrafting’ of baseball players

Inventing Baseball Heroes:Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and the S­porting Press in America
Amber Roessner
LSU Press
$39.95

Amber Roessner, a UGA alumna, examines “herocrafting” in sports journalism in Inventing Baseball Heroes.

An assistant journalism professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Roessner analyzes the work surrounding Detroit Tigers outfielder Ty Cobb and New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson.

While other scholars have chronicled the myth makers of the Golden Age of Sports Writing (1920-1930) who manufactured heroes out of baseball players for the mainstream media, Roessner probes further into how sportswriters compromised emerging professional standards of journalism as they crafted heroic tales that sought to teach American boys how to be successful players in the game of life.