Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball - Hardcover

Snyder, Brad

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071408207 ISBN 13: 9780071408202

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2003

Synopsis

Presents the history of the Homestead Grays, one of the Negro League's best baseball teams, and how they started the integration of baseball in Washington D.C., discussing such players as Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard.

About this title

About the Author

Brad Snyder's articles on baseball and other subjects have appeared in numerous publications including the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post, and the St. Petersburg Times. A graduate of Yale Law School, he is a lawyer and freelance writer. He lives in Washington, D.C.

From the Back Cover

The enthralling true story of the greatest baseball team ever forgotten

In a time when the country was divided into black and white, our soldier boys battled against the evils in Europe, and war-weary Americans gathered around green fields to forget their troubles in the joys of our national pastime, the greatest baseball dynasty you've probably never heard of electrified the game and set an unstoppable revolution in motion. So begins the fascinating and often surprising story of the Homestead Grays, the Negro League's most successful franchise, and how the fight to integrate baseball began not in Brooklyn with Jackie Robinson but in our nation's capital.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Washington, D.C., was a segregated Southern town. Black and white Washingtonians lived in separate worlds--until those worlds collided at Griffith Stadium. Standing in the heart of a thriving black district, the park played host to the white Washington Senators and, when the Senators were out of town, the Homestead Grays. There, the best team in the Negro Leagues reigned victorious on the same field where one of the worst teams in the all-white majors struck out again and again. Although white fans never caught on, tens of thousands of loyal black fans flocked to watch the great Grays. On those sun-bright stadium afternoons, the wall of segregation fell away; the fans sat wherever they wanted--and, together with their number-one team and a host of heroes, they transformed our nation's capital into the front lines of the campaign to integrate major-league baseball.

In this transcendent account, the author gracefully unfolds the true story behind this bold adventure, taking you back to those front lines, where intriguing characters such as journalists Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith fought doggedly for integration; the Negro Leagues' most celebrated sluggers, Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard, gave the major-league superstars a run for their money; and club owner Clark Griffith, mired in prejudice and greed, thwarted integration at every turn. Through numerous interviews with key players (many now deceased), a treasure trove of archival material, and dozens of unpublished historical photos, the author masterfully pieces together the lost legend of how the fight to integrate baseball really began, bearing witness at last to the greatest legends of black baseball and opening the book on a forgotten chapter in American history.

"This is the story of the lost era between the Babe and Jackie, of a crusading journalist named Sam Lacy, an immensely talented black ballplayer named Buck Leonard, and a stubborn major league owner named Clark Griffith. It's the story of why the fight to integrate major league baseball began in Washington and not in Brooklyn, why black Washington ultimately lost the fight, and why the Senators were not the first team to integrate. And it's the story of the greatest baseball dynasty that most people have never heard of, the Homestead Grays, whose wartime popularity at Griffith Stadium moved them beyond the shadow of the Senators."
--from the Introduction

So begins this powerful and passionate account of how the fight to integrate baseball really began. Moving seamlessly between the heroic exploits of the ballfield and the exploitation of the boardroom, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators reveals all the magic and madness that surrounded the legendary Homestead Grays and their lesser--but more recognized--stadium-mates, the Washington Senators.

Drawing on extensive interviews with key players, long-lost archives, and dozens of dazzling historical photos, the author meticulously chronicles the true story behind this forgotten chapter in the annals of baseball, painting a portrait of larger-than-life characters and lazy, golden afternoons you'll wish you could remember--when the Homestead Grays dominated Griffith Stadium and gave baseball's white superstars a run for their money.

Reviews

Snyder looks at the roots of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball, but examines that historic event from a variety of angles. This well-documented and enjoyable account illuminates the life of Sam Lacy, a crusading black journalist for a Washington, D.C., black weekly, and his efforts to force major league baseball to integrate. But the book is also a fascinating and largely untold story about the unholy but profitable alliance between Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, and the dynamic but shady Negro League team owner Cum Posey, founder of the Homestead Grays, a storied Negro League franchise founded in Pittsburgh. Using the burgeoning black middle class of WWII Washington, D.C., as a social backdrop, Snyder details how Negro League owners like Posey allied themselves financially with white Major League owners, renting segregated Major League ballparks (at exorbitant rates) for their Negro League teams while the white teams were on the road. The practice became particularly profitable in Washington after Posey moved his Homestead Grays (and such black stars as Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson) to D.C. from Pittsburgh in 1940. Disgusted by the Senators' racist owners and the team's inept play, black fans flocked to the pennant-winning Grays' games, which outdrew the Senators' games. Snyder also sketches the lives of great players like Buck Leonard with great sensitivity, insight and historical context. The book tells two stories: one is how the Griffiths, a legendary baseball family, killed baseball in Washington, D.C., through their own narrow-minded greed and racism; the other is the story of Lacy and Wendell Smith, his fellow black Hall of Fame sportswriter, and the extraordinary black athletes of the Negro Leagues and their determination to play baseball at its highest level.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Historical accounts of major league baseball's integration too often begin and end with one white owner, Branch Rickey, and one black player, Jackie Robinson. But, as with any significant historical milestone, things are never as simple as they seem. Snyder, who covered baseball for the Baltimore Sun, spent 10 years researching a little-known side skirmish in the battle to integrate the national pastime, one that took place in the shadow of the federal government. This struggle involved the white owner of the major-league Washington Senators, Clark Griffith, who was not as evil as he was penurious, and a black player, Buck Leonard, who was a more talented player than Robinson and probably every bit as courageous. The wild card in the Washington mix was Sam Lacy, a black journalist inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1997. Lacy, an eloquent supporter of integration, covered the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team that played in Griffith's ballpark when his Senators were on the road. Griffith vigorously opposed major-league baseball's integration because the rent from the Grays kept his other team afloat. Leonard, the star of the Grays, often referred to as the "black Lou Gehrig," was thought by many to be the logical choice to integrate the game. Snyder weaves the personal stories of Lacy, Griffith, and Leonard into a textured account of a time when baseball symbolized the nation at large and when those with vision understood the implications of integrating an experience shared by so many Americans. A fascinating, little-known chapter in the familiar story of baseball's color line. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071408207
• ISBN 13: 9780071408202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304