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Textile League Baseball

Author : Thomas K. Perry

Publisher : McFarland

Page : 332 pages

File Size : 33,29 MB

Release : 2004-02-10

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 9780786418756

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Book Description

After the Civil War, the Yankee textile industry began a steady transfer south, bringing with it the tradition of a mill village, usually owned by the mill's owner, where the workers and their families lived. The new game of baseball quickly became a foundation of mill village life. A rich tradition of textile league baseball in South Carolina is here reconstructed from newspaper accounts and interviews with former players and fans. Players such as "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Champ Osteen made their marks as "lintheads" in these semipro leagues. The fierce rivalries between competing mills and the impact of the teams on mill life are recounted. Appendices list club records and rosters for many of the teams from 1880 through 1955.



Let Them Play

Author : Margot Theis Raven

Publisher : Sleeping Bear Press

Page : 34 pages

File Size : 46,97 MB

Release : 2011-08-18

Category : Juvenile Nonfiction

ISBN : 1410308154

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Book Description

Segregated Charleston, SC, 1955: There are 62 official Little League programs in South Carolina -- all but one of the leagues is composed entirely of white players. The Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars, an all-black team, is formed in the hopes of playing in the state's annual Little League Tournament. What should have been a time of enjoyment, however, turns sour when all of the other leagues refuse to play against them and even pull out of the program. As the only remaining Little League team in the state, Cannon Street was named state winner by default, giving the boys a legitimate spot in the Little League Baseball World Series held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. While the Cannon Street team is invited to the game as guests, they are not allowed to participate since they have not officially "played" and won their state's tournament. Let Them Play takes its name from the chant shouted by the spectators who attended the World Series final. Author Margot Theis Raven recounts the inspiring tales of the Cannon Street All-Stars as they arrived in Williamsport, PA and never got the chance to play for the title thanks to the bigotry and ignorance of the South Carolina teams. Winning by forfeit, the Cannon Streeters were subsequently not allowed to participate in Williamsburg because they had not "played" their way into the tournament. Let Them Play is an important civil rights story in American history with an even more important message about equality and tolerance. It's a tale of humanity against the backdrop of America's favorite pastime that's sure to please fans of the sport and mankind. This summer will mark the 50th year since the fans' shouts of Let Them Play fell on deaf ears and 14 boys learned a cruel lesson in backwards politics and prejudice. This book can help teach us a new lesson and assure something like this never happens again.



A Summer's Adventure

Author : Sally M. Russell

Publisher : Author House

Page : 300 pages

File Size : 38,36 MB

Release : 2013-02-01

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 148171113X

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Book Description

Lucas Gillette recruited his 18 year old grandson, Mark, to accompany him on a search of a lifetime. His mother, Ruth Hayes, had left her family in Colorado, when she was just a teenager, to live with her grandparents in NY while she finished school, but for some unknown reason, she'd never returned. No one in New York knew of this family connection to Hayes, Colorado until Ruth had finally told her husband, as he lay on his death bed, that she could have family living out West. Although Lucas had tried, he'd learned very little before his mother's death, but he's determined now to find out if there could still be relatives in this small Colorado town. Their summer adventure took them across Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and then south in Wyoming, and Colorado until they reached their destination just west of Pueblo, Colorado. Finding relatives was exciting and more wonderful than they'd ever expected. A wedding, a romance for Mark, and many other experiences of fun and surprises filled their days and evenings.The family was united and all was well at the Haven of Rest Ranch.



Catching Dreams

Author : Frazier Robinson

Publisher : Syracuse University Press

Page : 260 pages

File Size : 26,87 MB

Release : 2000-12-01

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 9780815606581

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Book Description

In a rare memoir about the Negro Leagues and its celebrated players, Frazier "Slow" Robinson offers an inspiring and often entertaining view of the black baseball diamond through a catcher's mask. In 1939, at the age of 29—after playing professional baseball for twelve years—Frazier Robinson caught the legendary Satchel Paige in barnstorming games from New Orleans to Walla Walla. Robinson played several more seasons in the Negro Leagues before finishing his career in Canada. While his career was a solid one, it was less spectacular than that of his friend and Hall-of-Famer, Satchel Paige, and so more typical of the experience of most Negro Leaguers. Richly embroidered with the threads of black society and of life as a black athlete in a racially divided nation, Robinson recounts his long career with the skill and ease of a natural storyteller. He covers, in remarkable detail, the personal perspective of the men, the teams, and the times that shaped this uniquely American subculture. From playing catcher for obscure industrial teams to barnstorming with Satchel Paige, he chronologically traces his nationwide path through the 1920s, '30s, '40s, and early '50s. The Foreword by John "Buck" O'Neil and Introduction by Gerald Early place Robinson squarely in the world of sports, African American culture, and American history.



Shoeless Summer

Author : John Bell

Publisher : Vabella Pub

Page : 125 pages

File Size : 17,95 MB

Release : 2001

Category : Baseball players

ISBN : 9780971220409

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Book Description

In the summer of 1923, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was banned from organized baseball in 1921 for his alleged participation in the 1919 Chicago Black Sox World Series scandal, was signed on to play baseball for the Americus, Georgia semi-pro team of the independent South Georgia league. With the Americus club struggling, Joe Jackson came on board and turned things around not only for the team but the entire league. There was controversy with his playing at first, but it soon settled and made way for an astounding run of our national pastime. Shoeless Joe's time in Americus was capped off by leading the team to the league championship at the end of the season. Shoeless Summer, written by Americus native John Bell, tells the fascinating story of Shoeless Joe Jackson's days playing baseball in Americus in 1923. This book features a day-to-day chronology of the season with emphasis on the uproar that followed Americus signing the famed baseball outlaw to play for the team. Statistics and biographies of each of the Americus players, daily lineups and box scores, and the only photograph of Shoeless Joe with the Americus team in uniform known to exist make this a well-rounded piece of baseball history. The cities of Albany, Americus, Arlington, Bainbridge, Blakely, and Dawson each had teams in the South Georgia league. Shoeless Summer includes a complete list of players from each team as well as those who played in the major leagues. Baseball fans young and old will enjoy this factual account of one magical summer in a rural, baseball-crazed region on the country. ..".He came to Americus, Georgia in 1923 and helped a struggling, hometown baseball team get back on its feet and win the league title from its chief sports rival. None of the fans really cared what he was accused of or what he did or didn't do. All they knew was that he was the greatest ball player they had ever seen, and for a short time, they could call him their own. When Shoeless Joe Jackson left Americus, he left memories of a hero to a small baseball town -- memories of a Shoeless Summer."



Stolen Season

Author : David Lamb

Publisher : Diversion Books

Page : 250 pages

File Size : 22,30 MB

Release : 2014-05-20

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 1626812772

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Book Description

"A pennant-winning look at baseball at its purest." —Atlanta Journal & Constitution On the field with baseball classics like Men at Work and The Boys of Summer, David Lamb travels the backroads of America to draw a stirring portrait of minor league baseball that will enchant every fan who has ever sat in the bleachers and waited for the crack of the bat. A sixteen-thousand mile journey across America…. A travelogue of minor league teams and the towns that support them… A chronicle of hopes and dreams… Correspondent David Lamb embarks on a trek that captures the triumphs and defeats as thousands of players do all they can to reach the big leagues. In watching the games and riding the roads, Lamb also discovers a nation that breathes baseball, and towns that wrap their own dreams around their teams. Stolen Season is full of unforgettable characters, none more so than Lamb himself, a journalist who has written about and lived baseball his entire life, telling tales with humor and with warmth of a sport that reveals as much about Americans as it does about long summer days and nine glorious innings. "Part love letter, part snapshot, part history, and all-American...this book should be read by anyone who has yet to savor the sounds and delights of a minor-league baseball game." —New York Times Book Review "Thoroughly engaging." —Sporting News "An absorbing, delightful chronicle...at once nostaglic, sharp-eyed, and beautifully crafted." —San Francisco Chronicle



The Myth of the Amateur

Author : Ronald A. Smith

Publisher : University of Texas Press

Page : 345 pages

File Size : 31,28 MB

Release : 2021-05-04

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 1477322868

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Book Description

In this in-depth look at the heated debates over paying college athletes, Ronald A. Smith starts at the beginning: the first intercollegiate athletics competition—a crew regatta between Harvard and Yale—in 1852, when both teams received an all-expenses-paid vacation from a railroad magnate. This striking opening sets Smith on the path of a story filled with paradoxes and hypocrisies that plays out on the field, in meeting rooms, and in courtrooms—and that ultimately reveals that any insistence on amateurism is invalid, because these athletes have always been paid, one way or another. From that first contest to athletes’ attempts to unionize and California’s 2019 Fair Pay to Play Act, Smith shows that, throughout the decades, undercover payments, hiring professional coaches, and breaking the NCAA’s rules on athletic scholarships have always been part of the game. He explores how the regulation of male and female student-athletes has shifted; how class, race, and gender played a role in these transitions; and how the case for amateurism evolved from a moral argument to one concerned with financially and legally protecting college sports and the NCAA. Timely and thought-provoking, The Myth of the Amateur is essential reading for college sports fans and scholars.





A Summer Up North

Author : Jerry Poling

Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press

Page : 211 pages

File Size : 20,83 MB

Release : 2002-10-28

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 0299181839

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Book Description

June 12, 1952—only a local sportswriter showed up at the Eau Claire airport to greet a newly signed eighteen-year-old shortstop from Alabama toting a cardboard suitcase. "I was scared as hell," said Henry Aaron, recalling his arrival as the new recruit on the city’s Class C minor league baseball team. Forty-two years later, as Aaron approached the stadium where the Eau Claire Bears once played, an estimated five thousand people surrounded a newly raised bronze statue of a young "Hank" Aaron at bat. "I had goosebumps," he said later. "A lot of things happened to me in my twenty-three years as a ballplayer, but nothing touched me more than that day in Eau Claire." For the people of Eau Claire, Aaron’s summer two years before his Major League debut with the Milwaukee Braves symbolizes a magical time, when baseball fans in a small city in northern Wisconsin could live a part of the dream.



The Art of Fielding

Author : Chad Harbach

Publisher : Little, Brown

Page : 395 pages

File Size : 38,88 MB

Release : 2011-09-07

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0316192163

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Book Description

A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this widely acclaimed tale about love, life, and baseball, praised by the New York Times as "wonderful...a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting." Named one of the year's best books by the New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Kansas City Star, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Time Out New York. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others. "First novels this complete and consuming come along very, very seldom." --Jonathan Franzen