Under Jackie`s Shadow – Voices of Black Minor Leaguers Baseball Left Behind
Autor Mitchell Nathansonen Limba Engleză Hardback – 31 mar 2024
What was it like to be Black and playing in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1965, or Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973? What was it like to play for white coaches and scouting directors from the Jim Crow South who cut their professional teeth in the segregated game before Jackie Robinson ushered in the sport’s integration? Or to be called into the clubhouse with your Black teammates one spring training morning in 1969 and told that to make the ballclub you’d have to beat out the Black men in that room, because none of you were ever going to beat out a white player, regardless? Or to spend a staggering eight seasons playing A-ball in the Midwest League, even winning a triple crown, while watching less-talented white teammates get promoted each year while you stayed behind? The thirteen players in Under Jackie’s Shadow are going to tell you.
The players’ experiences in baseball’s Minor Leagues in the 1960s and 1970s do not comport with the largely celebratory tales the leagues like to tell about themselves. The Black Minor League players remained largely invisible men—most of whom couldn’t be named by even the most devoted baseball followers. Based on Mitchell Nathanson’s interviews, Under Jackie’s Shadow uses the players’ own words to tell the unvarnished story of what it was like to be a Black baseball player navigating the wilds of professional baseball’s Minor Leagues following the integration of the Major Leagues. Harrowing, beautiful, and maddening, these stories are vital to our understanding of race not only in baseball but in the United States as a whole.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496237170
ISBN-10: 149623717X
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 13 illustrations, 1 appendix
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.43 kg
Editura: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 149623717X
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 13 illustrations, 1 appendix
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.43 kg
Editura: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Mitchell Nathanson is a professor of law in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at the Villanova University School of Law. He is the author of several books, including Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (Nebraska, 2020), God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, and A People’s History of Baseball.
Extras
1
Mickey Bowers
My grand mom
Used to always say,
Take the bad things
Turn them into good things,
And enjoy the good things
That came out of the bad thing.
Some of the truest stories in baseball are never told.
When I was a kid, from 1956 to 1960, I lived in Germany
with my parents. And over in Germany we didn’t have a television.
We had Radio Free Europe, and my mother used to
read me stories from the Encyclopedia Britannica that my dad
bought for us. So living in that environment, I really didn’t
know any of the stuff that was going on in the United States
of America, such as the segregation policies down South and
Dr. King and people fighting for Black rights. We lived on an
army base and it was like we had our own little family there.
If you were in the military, you lived according to your dad’s
rank. My dad was a sergeant so we lived with the sergeants.
If my dad would have been an officer we would have lived
with the officers.
When I came back from Germany in 1960 we moved to an
army installation at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. And we never had
any problems as far as Blacks and whites there.
My friends—Imean the guys I grew up with, ate with,
slept over their houses, played football and baseball with—we
never talked about Black and white. I didn’t really experience
segregation until I signed with the Philadelphia Phillies.
It was like I was in a protective environment. In high school,
most of the kids were military people. The school was 98 percent
white and I never had one problem with anybody. I had
about fifteen to twenty college football scholarship offers.
Now when I look back on my life, I wish I would’ve gone to
college to play football because I would have matured a little
bit, understood some of the things that were going on in the
world, things I wasn’t privy to prior to signing with the Phillies.
Because when I signed with Philadelphia, some of the things
that I personally experienced, some of the things that I saw,
some of the things that other African American and Hispanic
players experienced, were a shock to me. It was really a shock
to me.
The Phillies, I think, took the whole cake. Had I known
that the Philadelphia Phillies were the way they were, there
wouldn’t have been enough money in the world for me to
play baseball in Philadelphia. But at the time I was happy I
got a shot with the Phillies when they drafted me because my
parents were from Pennsylvania. My dad and all my aunts
and uncles lived in Oxford, Pennsylvania. The Church of God
in Kennett Square, where all the hothouses are, that was my
grandfather’s church. He built that church. So, I said, when I get
to the big leagues my family can come down and see me play.
I played third base in high school. Never, ever played the
outfield. But they told me they drafted me as an infielder-outfielder
and they wanted me to play the outfield because I
had speed. I was the fastest man in the Phillies organization.
People say playing the outfield is easy. It’s not. It’s hard, especially
right field because the ball gets a lot of action on it. I did
the best I could, but I had my issues out there. I told Dallas
Green, the assistant farm director, I said, “You guys drafted
me as an outfielder. I never played outfield in my life. I don’t
know how to play the outfield.” But they stuck me in right field
and I had problems playing the ball off the bat.
Mickey Bowers
My grand mom
Used to always say,
Take the bad things
Turn them into good things,
And enjoy the good things
That came out of the bad thing.
Some of the truest stories in baseball are never told.
When I was a kid, from 1956 to 1960, I lived in Germany
with my parents. And over in Germany we didn’t have a television.
We had Radio Free Europe, and my mother used to
read me stories from the Encyclopedia Britannica that my dad
bought for us. So living in that environment, I really didn’t
know any of the stuff that was going on in the United States
of America, such as the segregation policies down South and
Dr. King and people fighting for Black rights. We lived on an
army base and it was like we had our own little family there.
If you were in the military, you lived according to your dad’s
rank. My dad was a sergeant so we lived with the sergeants.
If my dad would have been an officer we would have lived
with the officers.
When I came back from Germany in 1960 we moved to an
army installation at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. And we never had
any problems as far as Blacks and whites there.
My friends—Imean the guys I grew up with, ate with,
slept over their houses, played football and baseball with—we
never talked about Black and white. I didn’t really experience
segregation until I signed with the Philadelphia Phillies.
It was like I was in a protective environment. In high school,
most of the kids were military people. The school was 98 percent
white and I never had one problem with anybody. I had
about fifteen to twenty college football scholarship offers.
Now when I look back on my life, I wish I would’ve gone to
college to play football because I would have matured a little
bit, understood some of the things that were going on in the
world, things I wasn’t privy to prior to signing with the Phillies.
Because when I signed with Philadelphia, some of the things
that I personally experienced, some of the things that I saw,
some of the things that other African American and Hispanic
players experienced, were a shock to me. It was really a shock
to me.
The Phillies, I think, took the whole cake. Had I known
that the Philadelphia Phillies were the way they were, there
wouldn’t have been enough money in the world for me to
play baseball in Philadelphia. But at the time I was happy I
got a shot with the Phillies when they drafted me because my
parents were from Pennsylvania. My dad and all my aunts
and uncles lived in Oxford, Pennsylvania. The Church of God
in Kennett Square, where all the hothouses are, that was my
grandfather’s church. He built that church. So, I said, when I get
to the big leagues my family can come down and see me play.
I played third base in high school. Never, ever played the
outfield. But they told me they drafted me as an infielder-outfielder
and they wanted me to play the outfield because I
had speed. I was the fastest man in the Phillies organization.
People say playing the outfield is easy. It’s not. It’s hard, especially
right field because the ball gets a lot of action on it. I did
the best I could, but I had my issues out there. I told Dallas
Green, the assistant farm director, I said, “You guys drafted
me as an outfielder. I never played outfield in my life. I don’t
know how to play the outfield.” But they stuck me in right field
and I had problems playing the ball off the bat.
Cuprins
Preface: Jackie Robinson’s Verdict
Acknowledgments
1. Mickey Bowers
2. Milt Kelly
3. Edgar Pate
4. Moe Hill
5. Leroy Reams
6. Aaron Pointer
7. Ron Allen
8. Robert Kelly
9. Roland Hardson
10. John Thompson
11. Glenn Sterling
12. Wil Aaron
13. Chuck Stone
Afterword: A Note on Method
Appendix of Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Mickey Bowers
2. Milt Kelly
3. Edgar Pate
4. Moe Hill
5. Leroy Reams
6. Aaron Pointer
7. Ron Allen
8. Robert Kelly
9. Roland Hardson
10. John Thompson
11. Glenn Sterling
12. Wil Aaron
13. Chuck Stone
Afterword: A Note on Method
Appendix of Tables
Recenzii
“In his brilliant and important reckoning of baseball’s neglected Black heroes, Mitchell Nathanson masterfully illuminates their stories. I was immersed in the extraordinary lives of young athletes who boldly strived to more fully integrate the Major Leagues during the turbulent 1960s. Segregation and racism curved their love of the game, relegating their visions of glory to a field of dreams deferred. To be sure, the denial of their talents was baseball’s and America’s loss. Yet their memories are devoid of bitterness and regret. This book will inspire generations. It is a poignant story of what could have been and what may yet be.”—Chris Thomas King, author of The Blues: The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture
“Under Jackie’s Shadow is a journey over historical terrain strewn with the wreckage of Black players’ lives and dreams too often dashed against the ramparts of discriminatory traditions and consigned to oblivion. Under Jackie’s Shadow compels us to look at this hidden and lost history, to acknowledge and come to grips with its impact on the men most directly involved and its implications relative to what MLB was as an institution, what America was as a society, and what in some significant measure America is still burdened with as a nation today.”—Harry Edwards, author of The Revolt of the Black Athlete
Descriere
The stories of thirteen Black Minor League baseball players during the post–Jackie Robinson era, from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, who were figuratively and literally left behind even as both baseball and the country claimed a newfound racial progressiveness.