Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues & the Story of African-American Baseball

In some ways, to look at the history of black baseball is to look at the past image of civil rights in the whole of U.S. society. For this baseball fan, Shades of Glory shows that the history of black baseball is part heartening, seeing that, in the early days, not a vast quantity of racism came from the actual fans of the game. They simply wanted "their" clubs to field competitive teams. At the same time, also is it disheartening and, unfortunately, not surprising to read of the cementing of the notion that "money is the root of all evil", at least as far as the African-American in 19th century baseball was concerned. And when certain white stars, who seemed to be either outright prejudiced or just plain jealous, threatened to walk away from the game rather than continue to play with their black teammates, owners and league leaders caved, dismissing the African-American players from their teams and then essentially banning them from the leagues altogether. Author Lawrence D. Hogan has performed a valuable service to fans of the game by compiling this history of one of the most important facets of America's pastime.

It's fantastic to finally find a thorough and well written history book on African American Baseball. After all these years there's still so little to read about all the games and all the players that were such an important part of Black history and of the great sport of baseball Hogan does an amazing job at presenting detailed stories of most of the more important actors (players, owners, managers, journalists, and even fans). I especially appreciated the information on nineteenth century's teams and early twentieth century The amount of information on some of the greatest ball players that were never given the opportunity to play in the big leagues is simply amazing My only problem with the book is that although it is written in chronological order, there are some times were the stories jump from age to age -- for example, after describing how one of the leagues collapsed in the late 20s and started to tell about baseball in the early 30s, it suddenly jumps to another story in the early 20s All in all, a great read and a must for all serious baseball fans -- and not just African American Baseball fans or Negro League buffs...

There have been only a few books written about the history of black baseball, a glaring error which Shades of Glory helps to correct. Before I read this book, I had no idea of the number of various independent black baseball teams that existed in the late 19th century. Nor did I know of various players who stood out in Black baseball over the decades it existed. Yes of course I knew of Satchel Paige (who I got to see pitch when I was a young teenager), Cool Papa Bell, Buck O'Neill, Josh Gibson, but I learned about so many others through sidebars this book provides. It also provides a detailed history of the few blacks who played in organized baseball before the color line became so rigid. The history provided in this book is very good and details the independent teams that came and went in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the attempts to organize and maintain leagues, how Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier affected black baseball, and how his doing this effectively put an end to black baseball (which I'm sure was at the same time exciting and bittersweet to all Negro league ballplayers). I also enjoyed reading about the migration of blacks from the south to Northern cities like Chicago and how that helped further along black baseball in the Windy City. The stats of various black baseball stars at the back of the book were pretty good, considering that league statistics, standings and even box scores of Negro league games were not always available and remain difficult to track decades later. One small disappointment I had was there was no mention of black baseball on the West Coast. There were several West Coast black semi pro teams that barnstormed through the first part of the 20th century. There was even a West Coast Negro League (West Coast Baseball Association) that played in 1946. The league champion Oakland Larks later barnstormed after the league folded. I was surprised that there was not even a cursory mention of this team in the book, since one of their pitchers (Lionel Wilson) later became a judge and then mayor of Oakland, California. Other than this minor issue, I felt this book very well described the "rise and fall" of black baseball.

Shades of Glory is a very good narrative history of Black Baseball. It includes pre-segregation players such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, the Heyday of the Negro leagues and the teams that continued to play after the color barrier was broken. The book is thorough and I think will help people understand baseball's place in Black society of the time. I found only one weakness - For the real sports statistician, the book is disappointing for its only brief section on players stats.