Baseball's Great Experiment; Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. First Edition. First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/good. xii, 392 pages. Illus., notes, index. Some creasing to DJ edges. Jules Tygiel was a preeminent historian of American baseball. Tygiel joined the history faculty at San Francisco State University in 1978.Jules Tygiel's work on the history of baseball helped to legitimize sports history among historians and to show nonhistorians how sports can illuminate the past. His large and significant body of scholarly work was characterized by careful research, clear and graceful writing, and the selection of topics that speak not just to our understanding of our past but also of ourselves and our society. His first book, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (1983), probes both the process of integration and its limits, and is as much about race as about baseball. As he explained, "The dynamics of interracial relationships among players, coaches, and managers provide rare insights into what occurs when nonwhites are introduced into a previously segregated industry." Named to several "best book" lists, the book also received a Robert Kennedy Book Award. The author argues that the integration of baseball transformed not only American athletics but American society. The book carries the saga of baseball integration through 1959, when the Boston Red Sox, the last Major League hold-out, brought up black infielder "Pumpsie" Green.The color line in American baseball, until the late 1940s, excluded, with some big exceptions in the 19th century until the line was firmly drawn, players of Black African descent from Major League Baseball and its affiliated Minor Leagues. Racial segregation in professional baseball was sometimes called a gentlemen's agreement, meaning a tacit understanding, as there was no written policy at the highest level of organized baseball, the major leagues. But a high minor league's vote in 1887 against allowing new contracts with black players within its league sent a powerful signal that eventually led to the disappearance of blacks from the sport's other minor leagues later that century, including the low minors.After the line was in virtually full effect in the early 20th century, many black baseball clubs were established, especially during the 1920s to 1940s when there were several Negro Leagues. During this period some light-skinned Hispanic players, Native Americans, and native Hawaiians were able to play in the Major Leagues.The color line was broken for good when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers organization for the 1946 season. In 1947, both Robinson in the National League and Larry Doby with the American League's Cleveland Indians appeared in games for their teams. By the late 1950s, the percentage of black players on Major League teams matched or exceeded that of the general population.The color line was breached when Rickey, with Chandler's support, recruited the African American player Jackie Robinson in October 1945, intending him to play for the Dodgers. Chandler later wrote in his biography that although he risked losing his job as commissioner, he could not in good conscience tell black players they could not play with white players when they had fought alongside them in World War II.After a year in the minor leagues with the Dodgers' top minor-league affiliate, the Montreal Royals of the International League, Robinson was called up to the Dodgers in 1947. He endured epithets and death threats and got off to a slow start. However, his athleticism and skill earned him the first ever Rookie of the Year award, which is now named in his honor.