60 Feet Six Inches and Other Distances from Home: The (Baseball) Life of Mose YellowHorse - Softcover

Fuller, Todd

Softcover

ISBN 10: 093010076X ISBN 13: 9780930100766

Publisher: Holy Cow! Press, 2001

Synopsis

"Mose YellowHorse's 1920 fastball traveled "in the neighborhood of ninety-five miles an hour," and Todd Fuller's bio of YellowHorse is a similarly powerhouse affair. Avid and loving in the tribute it pays to this too-neglected American original, but willing to distinguish Mose the myth from the everyday Mose the man, this deeply researched and widely encompassing journey through baseball, politics, poetry, prose, stats, tribal life, and comic strip shenanigans is surely Fuller's equivalent of having all the bases loaded."—Albert Goldbarth

Mose YellowHorse (1898–1964), a Skidi Pawnee, played professional baseball for nearly a decade, most notably with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1921 and '22. Aside from his baseball achievements, YellowHorse, as a boy, traveled with and performed in Pawnee Bill's Wild West show, later served in the Army during World War I, and also appeared as a character in Chester Gould's Dick Tracy comic strip. After his death, he earned induction into both the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame. His baseball glove remains on permanent display at the Baeball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Using a structural pattern based on an old-time Pawnee Indian storytelling session, many voices and perspectives collaborate to form a multi-faceted recreation of Mose YellowHorse's life. Poetry, oral histories (from tribal elders), critical essays, letters, cartoons, photographs, and newspaper accounts are all included as a way of focusing on cross-cultural tensions.

Todd Fuller teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Drake University. In 1999 he completed his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Native American literatures from Oklahoma State University, where he researched this book for eight years, with the help of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. The author is donating half of his royalties to establish the Mose YellowHorse Higher Education Endowment.

About this title

About the Author

The author is now a professor of English who spent nearly a decade researching materials for this book, his first. His poems and essays on YellowHorse have appeared in such journals as the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Crazyhorse, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, the South Dakota Review, and Weber Studies: Voices and Viewpoints of the Contemporary West. He currently teaches courses in creative writing, Native American studies, and American literature at Drake University.

Reviews

Mose YellowHorse pitched two years in the major leagues for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1921 and 1922, winning eight games. Fuller's biography reveals the heartbreak, joy, and triumph that stand behind those unassuming statistics. YellowHorse, a full-blooded American Indian, reached the big leagues at a time when nonwhites were either formally or informally excluded. Using a sometimes disconcerting combination of narrative text and verse, Fuller re-creates a life notable for its dichotomies and its dignity. YellowHorse, a Skidi Pawnee, honed his pitching skills by hunting small game with thrown rocks. Besides playing professional baseball for 10 years, YellowHorse performed in a Wild West show, served in the armed forces, and was a model for a character in his friend Chester Gould's Dick Tracy comic strip. His postbaseball life was darkened by a long period of excessive drinking, but he used the same determination that fueled his baseball career to overcome his dependency. Although YellowHorse probably would have eschewed the mythic spotlight under which Fuller places him, this passionate, impressionistic chronicle tells a fascinating story about a trailblazing Native American athlete. Wes Lukowsky
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Edition details

• Publisher: Holy Cow! Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 093010076X
• ISBN 13: 9780930100766
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180