From Publishers Weekly
Snyder looks at the roots of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball, but examines that historic event from a variety of angles. This well-documented and enjoyable account illuminates the life of Sam Lacy, a crusading black journalist for a Washington, D.C., black weekly, and his efforts to force major league baseball to integrate. But the book is also a fascinating and largely untold story about the unholy but profitable alliance between Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, and the dynamic but shady Negro League team owner Cum Posey, founder of the Homestead Grays, a storied Negro League franchise founded in Pittsburgh. Using the burgeoning black middle class of WWII Washington, D.C., as a social backdrop, Snyder details how Negro League owners like Posey allied themselves financially with white Major League owners, renting segregated Major League ballparks (at exorbitant rates) for their Negro League teams while the white teams were on the road. The practice became particularly profitable in Washington after Posey moved his Homestead Grays (and such black stars as Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson) to D.C. from Pittsburgh in 1940. Disgusted by the Senators' racist owners and the team's inept play, black fans flocked to the pennant-winning Grays' games, which outdrew the Senators' games. Snyder also sketches the lives of great players like Buck Leonard with great sensitivity, insight and historical context. The book tells two stories: one is how the Griffiths, a legendary baseball family, killed baseball in Washington, D.C., through their own narrow-minded greed and racism; the other is the story of Lacy and Wendell Smith, his fellow black Hall of Fame sportswriter, and the extraordinary black athletes of the Negro Leagues and their determination to play baseball at its highest level.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
*Starred Review* Historical accounts of major league baseball's integration too often begin and end with one white owner, Branch Rickey, and one black player, Jackie Robinson. But, as with any significant historical milestone, things are never as simple as they seem. Snyder, who covered baseball for the Baltimore Sun, spent 10 years researching a little-known side skirmish in the battle to integrate the national pastime, one that took place in the shadow of the federal government. This struggle involved the white owner of the major-league Washington Senators, Clark Griffith, who was not as evil as he was penurious, and a black player, Buck Leonard, who was a more talented player than Robinson and probably every bit as courageous. The wild card in the Washington mix was Sam Lacy, a black journalist inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1997. Lacy, an eloquent supporter of integration, covered the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team that played in Griffith's ballpark when his Senators were on the road. Griffith vigorously opposed major-league baseball's integration because the rent from the Grays kept his other team afloat. Leonard, the star of the Grays, often referred to as the "black Lou Gehrig," was thought by many to be the logical choice to integrate the game. Snyder weaves the personal stories of Lacy, Griffith, and Leonard into a textured account of a time when baseball symbolized the nation at large and when those with vision understood the implications of integrating an experience shared by so many Americans. A fascinating, little-known chapter in the familiar story of baseball's color line. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
