In tsunamic fashion, the earthquake of the Great Depression triggered unforeseen changes in baseball thirty years later. Deep demographic waves from 1930 to 1960 shaped baseball in profound ways during the 1960s and 1970s. The unnaturally low birth rates of 1929-1941 followed by the historically high birth rates of 1946-1965 forced baseball to yield to a massive youth movement in the sport; incorporate hitherto ignored supplies of talent; and accede to an atypical style of play for nearly thirty years.

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Anthony Giacone

Anthony Giacalone (giacalone.anthony@gmail.com) is an independent historian and baseball writer, currently writing a cultural history of baseball, race and the media in the 1960s and 1970s.  A longtime contributor to Baseball Think Factory, he has previously delivered seven research presentations to SABR conventions.  When he attended his first baseball game at Comiskey Park in 1972, relief pitcher Dave Lemonds gave him a baseball.