When people talk about the greatest centerfielders in the history of baseball, the usual suspects tend to come up: Ken Griffey Jr., Willie Mays, Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb and Joe Dimaggio. Cool Papa Bell and Oscar Charleston factor into those debates too if the people debating are true scholars of the game, but as "what if?" subjects...
RBI is a program designed to fight the problem this book is all about. First, a little history about the RBI Program: Working as a scout for the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball (MLB) following his playing career, John Young noticed a lack of African American prospects. While working for the Baltimore Orioles, he surveyed prospects selected...
Many people do not realize that Mexico's baseball league was faster to integrate than the Major Leagues. Mexico was a place where black players would be able to play side-by-side with white players before they could do it in America. From 1937 to 1946, there were more than 150 US born Black players in Mexico playing professional ball in a...
Some players have been able to express themselves privately, but at the elite professional ranks it has been extremely rare and nobody has come out to the public while actively playing. The most prominent baseball player to have ever come out of the closet would probably be Glenn Burke. Burke was not an elite player, but he was a guy...
A lot of people think of Jackie Robinson when talking about the first black players in the top tiers of professional baseball, but in reality the first black man to play at that level was a catcher named Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker back in 1884. He even had a younger brother who also played major league baseball. He enjoyed some...
Vida Blue grew up in Rural Louisiana in the era of legalized segregation. Growing up in an all-segregated environment meant that Vida was not really directly exposed to racism as a child. He went to all-black churches, all black schools, his parents were buried in an all black cemetery. "Listen son, you don't wanna be nowhere where you're not...
"YOU PLAY BALL LIKE A GIRL!!!" I know pretty much anyone who has a passing interest in the game of baseball has heard this line from the movie "The Sandlot". If taken at face value, it implies that girls are inferior baseball players to boys, but if you look at it a bit deeper it implies that girls do not...