Raceball (eBook)

Rob Ruck (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011 | 1. Auflage
Beacon Press (Verlag)
978-0-8070-4806-1 (ISBN)

Infos

From an award-winning writer, the first linked history of African Americans and Latinos in Major League Baseball

After peaking at 27 percent of all major leaguers in 1975, African Americans now make up less than one-tenth--a decline unimaginable in other men's pro sports. The number of Latin Americans, by contrast, has exploded to over one-quarter of all major leaguers and roughly half of those playing in the minors. Award-winning historian Rob Ruck not only explains the catalyst for this sea change, he also breaks down the consequences that cut across society. Integration cost black and Caribbean societies control over their own sporting lives, changing the meaning of the sport, but not always for the better. While it channeled black and Latino athletes into major league baseball, integration did little for the communities they left behind.

By looking at this history from the vantage point of black America and the Caribbean, a more complex story comes into focus, one largely missing from traditional narratives of baseball's history. Raceball unveils a fresh and stunning truth: baseball has never been stronger as a business, never weaker as a game.

Textauszug

On many a Sunday afternoon in the 1930s, Greenlee Field atop the Hill District in Pittsburgh was the crossroads of a black baseball world that stretched over a thousand miles southward into the Caribbean. The Hill, perched above downtown, had long been the traditional destination for Europeans and African Americans coming to Pittsburgh. Now, with Cool Papa Bell blazing around the base paths, Josh Gibson swatting balls farther than anybody had ever seen before, and Satchel Paige telling his fielders to sit down and watch while he struck out the side, it witnessed black baseball's renaissance. Baseball fans were seeing a similar rebirth in Kansas City, where jazz bandleader Count Basie sat elbow-to-elbow with ministers and slaughterhouse workers at Muehlebach Stadium, home to the Kansas City Monarchs. Back East, forty-five hundred paying customers routinely packed the Dyckman Oval in upper Manhattan, on game days there, the staccato cadence of Caribbean migrants mixed with southern dialects, Italian, and Yiddish. But nowhere was the rise of black baseball more obvious than during the East-West Classic, when tens of thousands of African Americans gathered at Chicago's Comiskey Park to celebrate what had become black sport's biggest event, an annual all-star game featuring baseball's best black players.

As far as Major League Baseball was concerned, these hotspots for black baseball bubbling up across the country hardly existed. The National and American Leagues had established themselves as the major leagues after the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Americans inaugurated World Series play in 1903. Their power depended on eliminating competitors in the most lucrative markets and controlling an all-white labor force. By the 1920s, the major leagues had fended off would-be rivals, instituted a reserve clause that bound players to clubs, and smashed efforts to unionize. Major league executives like White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, who bullied his own players so much that several agreed to fix the 1919 World Series, and Branch Rickey, who was building a minor league farm system for the Cardinals so that he could monopolize as much talent as possible, dominated baseball. Other leagues collapsed or accepted minor league status, while the players, chastened by repeated defeat, acknowledged that owners held the whip hand.

Although major league executives aggressively sought dominion over all of white professional baseball, they felt no compulsion to control black ballplayers or fight for their fans. Nor did they or their players protest African Americans' exclusion from the major leagues. White players benefited from segregation, which relieved them of competition for the mere four hundred jobs available in the majors. It also eliminated owners' worries of alienating white fans, especially in southern cities like Washington, D.C., and St. Louis.

Moreover, white players and owners profited directly from black baseball. White major leaguers took advantage of black ballplayers' drawing power by competing against them in lucrative postseason barnstorming games. Major league owners gained by renting their ballparks to black teams on days their facilities would have otherwise stayed shut. The Caribbean leagues, meanwhile, were far enough away to pose little competition for players or fans. But like black baseball, they offered Major League Baseball a source of income. Major league clubs profited by playing in the islands, especially Cuba, during the winter. These trips were often the difference between making or losing money for the year. Some major league ballplayers also headed to the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.3.2011
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport ► Ballsport
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Öffentliches Recht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 0-8070-4806-2 / 0807048062
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8070-4806-1 / 9780807048061