Appel: No longer unwritten
From SABR member Marty Appel at The National Pastime Museum on September 4, 2014:
There is a fascinating exhibition this year at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It is called “Chasing Dreams,” and although the venue would suggest a Jewish theme, it is in fact an exhibition of how the nation’s immigrant population—Irish, Italian, Latin American, Asian, Jewish, and others—used baseball as a means of assimilating into American culture.
There is, for instance, focus on what Joe DiMaggio meant to Italian-Americans, what Hank Greenberg meant to Jews, or what Roberto Clemente meant to Puerto Ricans, and how prideful those groups were in having a hero of their own to embrace.
Baseball provided the forum for them to fit into conversations, when baseball conversations were abundant on every street corner.
I was walking through the exhibition when it opened in April, and I spotted a letter on Washington Senators stationery from 1953. My attention went to the three typed paragraphs, dictated to a secretary by Ossie Bluege, the team’s farm director, and sent to Mrs. Davis Sandlin, longtime assistant to Joe Engel who owned the Senators’ farm team, the Chattanooga Lookouts.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/no-longer-unwritten
Originally published: September 4, 2014. Last Updated: September 4, 2014.