Thorn: Revisiting Jules Tygiel’s “Black Ball” essay
From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on March 16, 2015:
Jules Tygiel, already famous for having written Baseball’s Great Experiment (Oxford University Press, 1983), wrote this sweeping history of the African American experience in baseball in 1988, for the late lamented Total Baseball, in which it was published with minor updates in each of seven succeeding editions. In that same year Jules and I collaborated on “Jackie Robinson’s Signing: The Real Story,” which has been reprinted at Our Game.
Other scholars have made notable contributions in this field, both narrower and deeper, but for one who would grasp the great story of black ball in broad strokes, this is, in my humble estimation, the best essay ever written. I have chosen to share the essay as it was published in the second edition of Total Baseball, in 1991. Certain historical facts herein have been amended or expanded by later research, but not the author’s basic treatment; his text is left intact except for his own corrections.
I will offer, however, Jules’s last updated conclusion, referencing the 1997 celebration of integration’s 50th anniversary and Commissioner Selig’s retirement of Jackie Robinson’s uniform number 42 across all of Major League Baseball: “At times the commemorations threatened to be overwhelmed by nostalgia and commercialism. However the 1997 festivities reminded the nation once again of its past heritage—both the shameful and the heroic—and its ongoing obligations to seek greater equality in the future.”
Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2015/03/16/black-ball/
Related links: Read part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 here.
Originally published: March 19, 2015. Last Updated: March 19, 2015.