Black Baseball's National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953

For twenty years, the East-West All-Star Game was a celebration of the outstanding achievements of some of the greatest baseball players ever, and so much more. The idea of legendary Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee to have a mid-season exhibition game quickly evolved into a major summer event - there was even fan voting for the starters in some years - with an atmosphere that I compare with college football's Bayou Classic. Author Larry Lester takes articles, photographs, box scores, league records and other statistics mostly from the leading newspapers that served the black community to recreate the excitement and glory of the games. The book is also an excellent retrospective of the top media sources like the Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender and Baltimore Afro-American. At its peak, the game was one of the hottest tickets for any sporting event - though mostly ignored by the white press - where Jim Crow could not find a seat in the stadium. There was no prejudice or segregation; the contest was indicative of the openness found on the field, in the seats and within management of Negro Leagues Baseball. The East-West All-Star Game was truly a showcase, on and off the field.

Bit by bit the obscure story of the legendary Negro Leaguers is being reconstructed, and books like this are playing a major role. Recounted here are all the East-West Games, the annual All-Star Games of the Negro Leagues, complete with boxscores, play-by-play, and contemporary newspaper coverage from the great African-American sportswriters & newspapers of the day. Finally those names from the dusty archives are being fleshed out into real players with recognizable skills. A superb reference. This is also a great companion volume to David Vincent's "The Midsummer Classic" about the (White) Major League All-Star Games, issued by the same publisher.