What if Ty Cobb and Shoeless Joe Jackson had stood side by side in Cleveland’s outfield? What if integration had taken place in the major leagues before 1947? Who would have won the World Series had a strike not shortened the 1994 season? In this compilation of fantasy scenarios, the history of baseball from 1869 to the controversial 2003 playoffs is literally rewritten by fifty journalists, historians, authors and former baseball players.

Play it Again: Baseball Experts on What Might have Been, a book on how baseball history could have been different, has just been released by McFarland. Steve Steinberg joins a group of experts, more than 35 historians and journalists, including Bill James, Alan Schwarz, Rob Neyer, Maury Allen, Gary Gillette, Mike Sowell, and Bill Deane, as well as former players, including Bobby Doerr, Bob Feller, Brooks Robinson, Carl Erskine, Bill Lee and Ron Cey.

Chronologically organized, the experts take up the major events of each era and speculate on the long-and short-term outcomes had history followed a different, but still likely, course. The book concludes with an appendix in which the panel members hold forth on general-interest topics such as star-crossed players who might have gone on to Hall of Fame careers, the greatest big-game players, and World Series pairings. The book also includes a short survey of the experts, as well as their predictions on Fantasy World Series pairings.

Here are just a few of the many issues covered by the experts in Play it Again:
1. What if the Red Stockings of 1869 had failed?
2. What if the 1904 World Series had been played?
3. What if Detroit had traded Ty Cobb to Cleveland?
4. What if Connie Mack had been able to hang onto his dynasties of the Teens and the ’30s?
5. What if Boston had not traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees?
6. What if Ray Chapman had survived and played beyond 1920?
7. What if the Black Sox scandal had not occurred?
8. What if World War II had not disrupted several careers?
9. What if integration had occurred much earlier than 1947?
10. What if Carl Erskine had faced Bobby Thomson in 1951 NL Playoffs, rather than Ralph Branca?
11. What if the Reds and Cards didn't trade Frank Robinson and Lou Brock?
12. What if Tony Conigliaro had not been struck by Jack Hamilton?
13. What if the Big Red Machine didn't acquire Joe Morgan from Houston?
14. Could another hitter have surpassed Babe Ruth's career home run mark before Hank Aaron?
15. What if there had been no strikes in 1981 and 1994?

Here are the issues that Steve contributed to:

• *What if the Federal League (1914-1915) had succeeded?
• *What if Connie Mack had not broken up the Athletics’ dynasty of the early Teens?
• *What if the White Sox had all of their key players (the banned Black Sox) available for
• 1921 and beyond?
• *What if Boston had not traded Babe Ruth and several star pitchers to the New York
• Yankees?
• *What if Cleveland’s Ray Chapman had not been killed by a pitched ball in 1920?
• *What if the St. Louis Browns had won the 1922 pennant (they fell just one game short)?

Broadcast journalist Jim Bresnahan , the book’s editor, is also the author of Revisioning the Civil War (2006). He lives in Lexington, Virginia. For more information on Play it Again, please visit the publisher's website, www.mcfarlandpub.com