Playing in Shadows

by Fink, Rob

• ISBN13: 9780896727014
• ISBN10: 0896727017
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-15
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

While baseball may have long been considered an all-American sport in which a melting pot could celebrate ethnic heroes like Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Connie Mack, and Stan Musial, racial segregation excluded blacks from an otherwise democratic picture. Such was certainly the case in Texas, where, in the state¿s first professional matchup soon after the Civil War, the R. E. Lees faced the Stonewalls¿and African Americans, not surprisingly, played no part. Drawing upon oral histories and mining such rare sources as rosters and box scores from black newspapers, Rob Fink situates the semiprofessional West Texas Colored League against the rise and decline of professional Negro Leagues. From the 1880s Galveston Flyaways through Dallas shortstop Ernie Banks¿s signing with the Chicago Cubs in 1953, Playing in Shadows brings to light an important but little-studied inning in American sport.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. xi
Photographs and Maps
Foreword	p. xiii
Baseball: America, Apple Pit, and Jim Crow
Preface	p. xxi
Life in the Shadows	p. 3
The Semiprofessional Game	p. 15
The Roots of Black Baseball
Andrew "Rube" Foster	p. 31
The Father of The Negro Leagues
Smokey Joe, Biz, and the Devil	p. 49
Black Texans Who Shaped The Game
The Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League	p. 75
Professional Black Baseball Comes to Texas
The Beginning of the End	p. 91
The Decline of The Semiprofessional Game
The Houston Eagles and the End of Negro League Baseball	p. 107
The Lasting Legacy	p. 123
Appendix	p. 129
Negro League Veterans Who Played in Texas
Notes	p. 133
Bibliography	p. 149
Index	p. 155
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