Rating: 
Summary: An outstanding historical work
Review: "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators'' is a must read for any serious student of baseball history. The author put a massive amount of research into this engaging account, of which I knew nothing even though I grew up in Washington not long after these events took place. This is an outstanding work in every regard. I have never met the author and I am not an African-American (not that anybody should care); I am just a fan of baseball and its history. If you are, too: Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Griffith blew his chance at making history
Review: A new book has hit the bookshelves that will be of interest to baseball fans, and to students of the history of baseball and history of black-white relations in urban America. Brad Snyder is author of Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold History of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (2003, Contemporary Books: Chicago, 418 pp.). The book develops several themes in exacting detail (125 pages of footnotes!). First, Snyder explains why the Clark Griffith was not the first baseball club owner to hire black players...missing a huge opportunity as Washington became a black majority city in the 1950s. Clark Griffith and Sam Posey, owner of the Grays, both had a vested interest in maintaining segregated baseball. Critical income to support for his Washington Senators was provided by renting Griffith Stadium to the Homesteads (100% of concessions plus large percent of the gate receipts). Posey did not have the financial means to construct another ballpark in or near D.C., and he knew the Negro leagues would disappear if the major leagues were integrated. Second, the book follows the career of Sam Lacy, an aggressive advocate of integration in the major leagues, writing for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Having grown-up in segregated Washington, and failing to make it as a player in the Negro Leagues, Lacy had plenty of motivation to lead the campaign to integrate the major leagues. Lacy had to live with the irony of having contributed to integration, but at the price of losing the Negro Leagues, the blame for which was not Lacy's alone, but for which he was attacked by some. Lacy is quoted as saying: "While I didn't like to attack an institution [the Negro Leagues], I certainly didn't want to support or stand by idly and see a symbol for frustration." The third theme developed in Snyder's book is the rich baseball legacy of the Homestead Grays, led by Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson. The team was a dynasty during the early and late 1930s in the Negro Leagues. The Grays were able to turn a profit in Washington, which is why they played the majority of their home game in D.C. rather than remain in Pittsburgh. One chapter is devoted to how "Satchel Paige Saves the Grays," by attracting a large attendance to games in which he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs against the Grays in a number of classic games. Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard are all in Baseball's Hall of Fame. Snyder does an excellent job of describing their intertwined lives while documenting an important era in the history of baseball and the nation. Griffith Stadium was situated in the heart of a thriving black neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s. One cannot help but wonder how the sad performance of the Washington Senators in the late 1940s through the 1950s might have been altered if Calvin Griffith had hired Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, and other members of the Homestead Grays who were playing in his ballpark under his watchful eye. The Griffith family is partly to blame for why Washington has not enjoyed major league baseball for over 30 years. By not leading the move to hire black players, Griffith and his adopted son, Calvin, alienated a generation of baseball fans in the nation's capitol, and true to his segregationist attitude, missed a chance at making history.
Rating:
Summary: Griffith blew his chance at making history
Review: A new book has hit the bookshelves that will be of interest to baseball fans, and to students of the history of baseball and history of black-white relations in urban America. Brad Snyder is author of Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold History of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (2003, Contemporary Books: Chicago, 418 pp.). The book develops several themes in exacting detail (125 pages of footnotes!). First, Snyder explains why the Clark Griffith was not the first baseball club owner to hire black players...missing a huge opportunity as Washington became a black majority city in the 1950s. Clark Griffith and Sam Posey, owner of the Grays, both had a vested interest in maintaining segregated baseball. Critical income to support for his Washington Senators was provided by renting Griffith Stadium to the Homesteads (100% of concessions plus large percent of the gate receipts). Posey did not have the financial means to construct another ballpark in or near D.C., and he knew the Negro leagues would disappear if the major leagues were integrated. Second, the book follows the career of Sam Lacy, an aggressive advocate of integration in the major leagues, writing for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Having grown-up in segregated Washington, and failing to make it as a player in the Negro Leagues, Lacy had plenty of motivation to lead the campaign to integrate the major leagues. Lacy had to live with the irony of having contributed to integration, but at the price of losing the Negro Leagues, the blame for which was not Lacy's alone, but for which he was attacked by some. Lacy is quoted as saying: "While I didn't like to attack an institution [the Negro Leagues], I certainly didn't want to support or stand by idly and see a symbol for frustration." The third theme developed in Snyder's book is the rich baseball legacy of the Homestead Grays, led by Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson. The team was a dynasty during the early and late 1930s in the Negro Leagues. The Grays were able to turn a profit in Washington, which is why they played the majority of their home game in D.C. rather than remain in Pittsburgh. One chapter is devoted to how "Satchel Paige Saves the Grays," by attracting a large attendance to games in which he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs against the Grays in a number of classic games. Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard are all in Baseball's Hall of Fame. Snyder does an excellent job of describing their intertwined lives while documenting an important era in the history of baseball and the nation. Griffith Stadium was situated in the heart of a thriving black neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s. One cannot help but wonder how the sad performance of the Washington Senators in the late 1940s through the 1950s might have been altered if Calvin Griffith had hired Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, and other members of the Homestead Grays who were playing in his ballpark under his watchful eye. The Griffith family is partly to blame for why Washington has not enjoyed major league baseball for over 30 years. By not leading the move to hire black players, Griffith and his adopted son, Calvin, alienated a generation of baseball fans in the nation's capitol, and true to his segregationist attitude, missed a chance at making history.
Rating:
Summary: How Can I Sign Up for Season's Tickets?
Review: After reading "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators", I'm ready for season's tickets and let's play ball! While having only heard the names Monarchs, Homestead Grays, Stars and a few other teams, I really knew very little about them. While not a Washingtonian, I have lived in this area for thirty years and missed seeing the Senators by just this much. However, I think the team I really and truely missed seeing was the Homestead Grays. And as I read through the book, one particular player became my favorite, Mr. Buck Leonard. Mr Synder has provided an exceptional and thoroughly well researched book. Yes, it is about the Grays, the Senators, Griffith, Posey, economics, statistics and the integration of baseball, all made wonderfully readable, but Mr. Leonard stands out above them all. He and his teammates are a living, breathing part of the history of Washington, DC. And thank you to Mr Synder for giving them life once again.
Rating:
Summary: How Can I Sign Up for Season's Tickets?
Review: After reading "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators", I'm ready for season's tickets and let's play ball! While having only heard the names Monarchs, Homestead Grays, Stars and a few other teams, I really knew very little about them. While not a Washingtonian, I have lived in this area for thirty years and missed seeing the Senators by just this much. However, I think the team I really and truely missed seeing was the Homestead Grays. And as I read through the book, one particular player became my favorite, Mr. Buck Leonard. Mr Synder has provided an exceptional and thoroughly well researched book. Yes, it is about the Grays, the Senators, Griffith, Posey, economics, statistics and the integration of baseball, all made wonderfully readable, but Mr. Leonard stands out above them all. He and his teammates are a living, breathing part of the history of Washington, DC. And thank you to Mr Synder for giving them life once again.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond a Doubt
Review: Beyond a doubt this is a well documented, interesting to read, important addition to the history of black baseball in America.
Snyder recreates the era of parallel universes for black and white Americans when contact between the races was rare. All baseball fans were cheated out of seeing the best players compete because some had darker skins than others. The frustations of ballplayers who knew that they could compete but where denied the opportunity is presented against the background of a segregated America.
As a public libray director and an individual baseball book collector I heartily recommend this title.
Rating:
Summary: Homestead Grays - news to even this 4th generation DC guy!
Review: Brad Snyder shows us that early 20th Century African-Americans weren't only progressing in academics at the nearby venerated Howard University; they were also making strides in professional sports by sharing Griffith Stadium, which was practically on Howard U's campus,with the beloved but hapless Washington Senators! That a "negro" team was able to utilize the very same facilities as the Senators in the still very Southern and provincial Washington, DC of the 1930's - 1950's came as a shock to me. DC was the last NFL team to integrate pro football with Bobby Mitchell in the late 1950's; George Preston Marshall was no civil rights activist, and had to be forced to integrate his Redskins. It is, therefore, thrilling to see how Washington, DC played a part in the eventuality of pro sports integration, realized in Jackie Robinson's signing in 1947. Snyder tells an interesting tale that all who study the sociological development of a fully integrated Major League Baseball must read! (Now Brad....send Selig a note to bring us back our team! :}
Rating:
Summary: Snyder & His Book in the CASEY Award Spotlight!
Review: Just when it seems that the Negro Leagues have been exhausted as a subject, Brad Snyder gives us this terrific book which focuses on a very important part of the story. One of the ten best baseball books of 2003.
Rating:
Summary: separate but not equal..... the senators and the grays
Review: Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Looking at the display window of the Stall and Dean store in Seattle, Washington, my eye was drawn by the magnificent photo of the Homestead Grays on the dust jacket of Brad Snyder's book, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I cannot honestly say that I recognized any of the players in the photo but the picture evoked a time when baseball, in both its black and white versions, was played exclusively on diamonds of grass and dirt in ballparks that did not shut out the sky. I went into the store and purchased the book.
Brad Snyder's book focuses on black baseball in Washington D.C. from the arrival of the Homestead Grays from Pittsburgh in 1940 through and beyond the integration of the major leagues by Jackie Robinson in 1947. The push and shove to integrate baseball-- and a mighty push and shove it was-- is the main theme of the book. Black journalist Sam Lacy and others pushed to integrate the game and were met by the desperate shove of the baseball establishment to keep the major leagues white. Sadly when integration came to baseball, the Grays and the black newspapers that covered the team fell into eclipse.
Brad Snyder's main strength as a writer is his ability to portray three dimensional characters. The best description of Branch Rickey I have ever read is on page 217 of Snyder's book: "Wesley Branch Rickey talked like a preacher and ran his baseball team like a card shark." The main characters in the book, Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard, all emerge as complex human beings rather than stick figure heroes or villians.
No one in his right mind would want to go back to the days of the Grays. That being said, something has been lost from a time when black people--- and for that matter even white people like Clark Griffith-- owned and ran baseball teams. That lost time, with its warts as well as its beauty, is splendidly recreated in Brad Snyder's Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I recommend that anyone, baseball fan or not, read his book.
Rating:
Summary: separate but not equal..... the senators and the grays
Review: Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Looking at the display window of the Stall and Dean store in Seattle, Washington, my eye was drawn by the magnificent photo of the Homestead Grays on the dust jacket of Brad Snyder's book, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I cannot honestly say that I recognized any of the players in the photo but the picture evoked a time when baseball, in both its black and white versions, was played exclusively on diamonds of grass and dirt in ballparks that did not shut out the sky. I went into the store and purchased the book.
Brad Snyder's book focuses on black baseball in Washington D.C. from the arrival of the Homestead Grays from Pittsburgh in 1940 through and beyond the integration of the major leagues by Jackie Robinson in 1947. The push and shove to integrate baseball-- and a mighty push and shove it was-- is the main theme of the book. Black journalist Sam Lacy and others pushed to integrate the game and were met by the desperate shove of the baseball establishment to keep the major leagues white. Sadly when integration came to baseball, the Grays and the black newspapers that covered the team fell into eclipse.
Brad Snyder's main strength as a writer is his ability to portray three dimensional characters. The best description of Branch Rickey I have ever read is on page 217 of Snyder's book: "Wesley Branch Rickey talked like a preacher and ran his baseball team like a card shark." The main characters in the book, Clark Griffith, Sam Lacy, and Buck Leonard, all emerge as complex human beings rather than stick figure heroes or villians.
No one in his right mind would want to go back to the days of the Grays. That being said, something has been lost from a time when black people--- and for that matter even white people like Clark Griffith-- owned and ran baseball teams. That lost time, with its warts as well as its beauty, is splendidly recreated in Brad Snyder's Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. I recommend that anyone, baseball fan or not, read his book.
|
