January 19, 2009
The Giants
On Martin Luther King Day, this photo from the Baseball Hall of Fame seems appropriate. Here's a few book suggestions on baseball and race:
Jackie Robinson's opening day.
Two books on Curt Flood.
My favorite, Brushing Back Jim Crow.
Posted by David Pinto at
09:11 AM
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also "Only the Ball Was White" and "Shut Out"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897259-1,00.html
Time, Aug. 14, 1964
"Dark, whose talent-loaded Giants were still sputtering along in second place, one game back of the Philadelphia Phillies, sat down in San Francisco to discuss his woes with a visiting sportswriter, Stan Isaacs, columnist for Newsday, a Long Island, N.Y., daily. "We have trouble," Isaacs quoted Dark as saying, "because we have so many Negro and Spanish-speaking ball players on this team. They are just not able to perform up to the white ball players when it comes to mental alertness. You can't make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you can get from white players."
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Players like Dark and his ilk did not rejoice when Jackie Robinson and Ozzie Virgil entered professional baseball. The tacit racial bias instituted by the owners (and endorsed or accepted by white players) benefited the players' career.
With the opening of the talent pool to many non-Caucasian players, opportunities for marginal white players were reduced. Many remained career minor leaguers or played briefly in the major leagues. Without the integration of baseball, they would have played longer and received more benefits from their play. As we know from history, when economic times change drastically or get tough, scapegoating and a tendency to fall back on learned and traditional hatred of "the other' increases.
Many of these men stayed in the game in the 60's and 70's as club personnel (scouts, minor league managers).
At the time these players who bore at a minimum a financial animus towards Robinson/Virgil became field leaders, African-American particpation in MLB flourished. Ownership and front office personnel eagerly tapped the heretofore ignored talent pool in order to improve their organizations. The high water mark of over 25% of 40 man roster players being A/A came in the late 70's.
These players came from not just the South, but urban areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco or Oakland, Chicago, Tampa....but the mangers put in charge of their careers in the bushes had no concept of the A/A (or Latin) players lives due to the mandated or social seperation of their Southern youth.
It is amazing to reflect and see how many players were strong enough to survive this gauntlet, but we also have to see which careers were destroyed in the process.
I will spend part of the day remembering indivudual moments of racism and enlightenment.