Lawrence D. Hogan: 'The Forgotten History of African American Baseball'
By Jacqueline Cutler
April 20, 2014 at 7:03 AM
A retired professor of history at Union County Community College, Lawrence D. Hogan, offers a detailed account of gifted black players, many of whom have been forgotten.
'The Forgotten History of African American Baseball’
By Lawrence D. Hogan
(Praeger, 269 pp., $48)
My late dad was the sort of sports fan who listened to a game on the radio, while watching another on TV and checking stats in the paper. One of his happiest moments was shaking Jackie Robinson’s hand in the spring of 1947, when Robinson integrated Major League baseball.
Though Dad tried drumming baseball history into me, I learned more decades later with my son. Those two would have had a religious experience making the trek up to Cooperstown. Instead, it was just the kid in the role of guide at the Baseball Hall of Fame, explaining the magnificence of Satchel Paige and how MLB history would be so different were the Negro Leagues included.
So when Lawrence D. Hogan, professor emeritus of history at Union County College in Cranford, wrote to me about his book, I was intrigued.
This is a book for the serious fan of history and baseball. Hogan does an excellent job of placing the players in their time, explaining what was going in this country that allowed the barriers in the first place and what happened as baseball evolved.
Here, he explains:
"(The) black major league baseball player, Moses Walker, who in the heady days of the 1880s came closer than any other African American ballplayer to achieving parity with whites, but had been ‘segregated out’ as Jim Crow became the American norm ..."
As with any non-fiction book, you could look up specific events and players, reading cover-to-cover gives a sense of how the game and America changed.
Hogan continues earnestly through the years. The book picks up speed when he gets to Satchel Paige on page 168. For those unaware of Paige’s feats, consider these:
"At his first professional tryout, he knocked 14 out of 15 cans off a fence from 60 feet.
While touring, a favorite trick was to set a ball on a box at home plate and bet he could hit it at least once in three times. He usually won.
With two batters facing each other 6 inches apart, he would pitch between them, even knocking cigars out of their mouths."
His age was a moving target, and the St. Louis Browns official roster in 1953 listed his age: "September 11, 1892, * 1896, * 1900, * 1904. * (*Take your pick)."
Hogan also relays anecdotes of famous players such as John Henry Lloyd, better known as Pop, whose plaque in Cooperstown states he was "regarded as the finest shortstop in Negro baseball." When he wasn’t playing, Lloyd was a janitor at the main post office in Atlantic City.
The two best sections happen to involve New Jersey.
Hogan writes about the remarkable Paul Robeson, the Princeton-born singer, lawyer, civil rights activist and gifted athlete:
"Probably, no individual figure presents the 1920s goldenness and its ‘New Negroness’ better than a man who is usually remembered for his prowess in arenas other than those of athletic endeavors. Five springs into the golden decade of sports, an athletic champion returned to a field of play where he had starred as an undergraduate at Rutgers University."
Though everyone knows about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, fewer can name the second trailblazer — Lawrence Eugene Doby, who was the first black player to integrate the American League when he began playing with the Cleveland Indians. Hogan relays recollections of Doby, who grew up in Paterson, from The Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg:
"He told me how on his first day, he stood for five embarrassing minutes because no one would warm up with him, until Joe Gordon tossed him a ball."
Izenberg also recalled the day that Doby’s career could have imploded:
"As a redneck fan in St. Louis kept zinging him with sexual remarks about his wife, Helyn, Doby had more than he could handle."
Coach Bill McKechnie restrained Doby, Izenberg said, and the coach warned the player that if he let loose, no other black players would play in the majors for a decade.
This baseball season is still fresh enough that fans feel anything is possible. But it is worth learning what was impossible for gifted black players until 67 years ago this month — when Robinson broke baseball’s color line on April 15, 1947.
Jacqueline Cutler: jacquelinecutler@verizon.net
 |
| African American baseball history documented. |
April 20, 2014 at 7:03 AM
A retired professor of history at Union County Community College, Lawrence D. Hogan, offers a detailed account of gifted black players, many of whom have been forgotten.
'The Forgotten History of African American Baseball’
By Lawrence D. Hogan
(Praeger, 269 pp., $48)
My late dad was the sort of sports fan who listened to a game on the radio, while watching another on TV and checking stats in the paper. One of his happiest moments was shaking Jackie Robinson’s hand in the spring of 1947, when Robinson integrated Major League baseball.
Though Dad tried drumming baseball history into me, I learned more decades later with my son. Those two would have had a religious experience making the trek up to Cooperstown. Instead, it was just the kid in the role of guide at the Baseball Hall of Fame, explaining the magnificence of Satchel Paige and how MLB history would be so different were the Negro Leagues included.
So when Lawrence D. Hogan, professor emeritus of history at Union County College in Cranford, wrote to me about his book, I was intrigued.
This is a book for the serious fan of history and baseball. Hogan does an excellent job of placing the players in their time, explaining what was going in this country that allowed the barriers in the first place and what happened as baseball evolved.
Here, he explains:
"(The) black major league baseball player, Moses Walker, who in the heady days of the 1880s came closer than any other African American ballplayer to achieving parity with whites, but had been ‘segregated out’ as Jim Crow became the American norm ..."
As with any non-fiction book, you could look up specific events and players, reading cover-to-cover gives a sense of how the game and America changed.
Hogan continues earnestly through the years. The book picks up speed when he gets to Satchel Paige on page 168. For those unaware of Paige’s feats, consider these:
"At his first professional tryout, he knocked 14 out of 15 cans off a fence from 60 feet.
While touring, a favorite trick was to set a ball on a box at home plate and bet he could hit it at least once in three times. He usually won.
With two batters facing each other 6 inches apart, he would pitch between them, even knocking cigars out of their mouths."
His age was a moving target, and the St. Louis Browns official roster in 1953 listed his age: "September 11, 1892, * 1896, * 1900, * 1904. * (*Take your pick)."
Hogan also relays anecdotes of famous players such as John Henry Lloyd, better known as Pop, whose plaque in Cooperstown states he was "regarded as the finest shortstop in Negro baseball." When he wasn’t playing, Lloyd was a janitor at the main post office in Atlantic City.
The two best sections happen to involve New Jersey.
Hogan writes about the remarkable Paul Robeson, the Princeton-born singer, lawyer, civil rights activist and gifted athlete:
"Probably, no individual figure presents the 1920s goldenness and its ‘New Negroness’ better than a man who is usually remembered for his prowess in arenas other than those of athletic endeavors. Five springs into the golden decade of sports, an athletic champion returned to a field of play where he had starred as an undergraduate at Rutgers University."
Though everyone knows about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, fewer can name the second trailblazer — Lawrence Eugene Doby, who was the first black player to integrate the American League when he began playing with the Cleveland Indians. Hogan relays recollections of Doby, who grew up in Paterson, from The Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg:
"He told me how on his first day, he stood for five embarrassing minutes because no one would warm up with him, until Joe Gordon tossed him a ball."
Izenberg also recalled the day that Doby’s career could have imploded:
"As a redneck fan in St. Louis kept zinging him with sexual remarks about his wife, Helyn, Doby had more than he could handle."
Coach Bill McKechnie restrained Doby, Izenberg said, and the coach warned the player that if he let loose, no other black players would play in the majors for a decade.
This baseball season is still fresh enough that fans feel anything is possible. But it is worth learning what was impossible for gifted black players until 67 years ago this month — when Robinson broke baseball’s color line on April 15, 1947.
Jacqueline Cutler: jacquelinecutler@verizon.net
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