Whirty: Respect for black baseball legend Sol White
From SABR member Ryan Whirty at the Staten Island Advance on May 3, 2014:
Over several decades in the 20th century, hundreds of penniless African-Americans from other portions of New York were shipped to Staten Island to be buried in pauper’s graves in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park in Oakwood. They were virtually nameless and faceless, both in life and death.
But in 2006, one of them did get a face and a name. That’s when Bellaire, Ohio, native, Harlem resident and hardball legend King Solomon “Sol” White was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A man who had excelled as a player, manager, team owner, author and journalist for more than a half-century spanning the 1880s to the 1930s was at last recognized with a plaque in Cooperstown.
“Sol White was what you might call a five-tool historical figure,” says Society for American Baseball Research member Gary Ashwill, who is writing an introduction to a new e-book edition of White’s seminal 1907 tome, “History of Colored Baseball.”
“As a pioneer, executive, manager, sportswriter and player there aren’t too many who can match his legacy,” Ashwill said. “You’ve got A.G. Spalding, Rube Foster and Sol White — and I can’t think of too many others who’d fit into that group.”
Read the full article here: http://www.silive.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/05/respect_for_baseball_legend_so.html
Originally published: May 5, 2014. Last Updated: May 5, 2014.