Major League Baseball began with the founding of the National League in 1876. In the 145 seasons since then, one season stands out as unique for the astounding nature of hitting: 1930. The 1930 season was a tipping point for baseball and the country as a whole. For the decade of the 1920s, baseball had embraced the refreshing breeze of the "Lively Ball Era" in conjunction with the Roaring Twenties. Now, at the start of a new decade, the sport was pondering if it had fallen for too much of a good thing just as the Great Depression was beginning to deliver a sobering blow to the good times of the last decade. Americans were about to be bludgeoned on the baseball field and at the bank.-- From the preface to "1930."