Baseball’s Forgotten Black Heroes


Book Description

In 1947, Jackie Robinson changed the game of baseball by becoming the first black player on a modern day major league team. Jackie made history with the Brooklyn Dodgers and this story is about Jackie and the seventeen players who followed him. These Black Heroes challenged the status quo and policies of team owners and were part of the first wave of black players who played on the sixteen major league teams that existed in 1947. It was not until 1959 (three years after Jackie retired) that the last of the sixteen teams added a black player to their roster.




The Negro Leagues


Book Description

Series information from publisher's website.




Before Brooklyn


Book Description

In the April of 1945, exactly two years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, liberal Boston City Councilman Izzy Muchnick persuaded the Red Sox to try out three black players in return for a favorable vote to allow the team to play on Sundays. The Red Sox got the councilman’s much-needed vote, but the tryout was a sham; the three players would get no closer to the major leagues. It was a lost battle in a war that was ultimately won by Robinson in 1947. This book tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from communist newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that black newspapers espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes of blacks throughout the country. It also reminds us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual. And then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew.




Invisible Men


Book Description

The Negro baseball leagues were a thriving sporting and cultural institution for African Americans from their founding in 1920 until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Rogosin's narrative pulls the veil off these "invisible men" and gives us a glorious chapter in American history.




Only the Ball was White


Book Description

Tells the forgotten story of Black star-quality athletes excluded from professional baseball because of the big league's color line.




Heroes of Baseball


Book Description

TY COBB. CHRISTY MATHEWSON. SHOELESS JOE JACKSON. BABE RUTH. LOU GEHRIG. JACKIE ROBINSON. JOE DIMAGGIO. MICKEY MANTLE. WILLIE MAYS. DUKE SNIDER. TED WILLIAMS. CURT FLOOD. ROBERTO CLEMENTE. HANK AARON. Their names echo through the halls of time and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Their feats are legendary. They never quit, and they never backed down. They inspired generations of Americans to push themselves to do their very best. They were, and remain, the heroes of baseball. Hitting monster home runs, pitching perfect games, making impossible catches, and stealing home during the World Series -- these are the kinds of feats that turn baseball players into baseball superstars. But it takes more than great feats to become a hero of the game. Every generation needs its own heroes, and in each generation that need is answered differently. Heroes reflect the times and societies in which they live and work. The impact made by baseball's heroes affects the way our society perceives itself, as well as the goals we set for ourselves and for our nation. Award-winning sportswriter Robert Lipsyte presents his vision for who the heroes of the game are, and what they did to achieve their legendary status.




Our Team


Book Description

The riveting story of four men—Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige—whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history. In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy. Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series--all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports.




Baseball's Great Experiment


Book Description

Offers a history of African American exclusion from baseball, and assesses the changing racial attitudes that led up to Jackie Robinson's acceptance by the Brooklyn Dodgers.




Voices from the Negro Leagues


Book Description

Baseball lore is replete with the tales of such legendary Negro League stars as Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson and a few others. But the stories of the many other African Americans, both stars and journeymen, have largely been forgotten. These were the men who barnstormed the country, playing in loosely organized leagues and eking out a living doing what they did best, playing baseball. In this work, 52 players reminisce about what it was like to play in the Negro Leagues, from the great teams and players to the terrible Jim Crow conditions they faced in the South. Now in their sixties, seventies and eighties, these men reflect on their careers with humor, bluntness, and poignancy, providing a rich record of a part of the game that is quickly being lost to history.




Shades of Glory


Book Description

The result of a study commissioned by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and funded by a grant from Major League Baseball(, this richly illustrated, comprehensive history combines vivid narrative, visual impact, and a unique statistical component to re-create the excitement and passion of the Negro Leagues. 75 photos.