Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901

Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901
Author: Michael E. Lomax
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003-04-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780815629702

Here is the first in-depth account of the birth of black baseball and its dramatic passage from grass-roots venture to commercial enterprise. In the late nineteenth century resourceful black businessmen founded ball teams that became the Negro Leagues. Racial bias aside, they faced vast odds, from the need to court white sponsors to negotiating ball parks. With no blacks in cities, they barnstormed small towns to attract fans, employing all manner of gimmickry to rouse attention. Drawing on major newspapers and obscure African-American journals, the author explores the diverse forces that shaped minority baseball. He looks unflinchingly at prejudice in amateur and pro circles and constant inadequate press coverage. He assesses the impact of urbanization, migration, and the rise of northern ghettoes, and he applauds those bold innovators who forged black baseball into a parallel club that appealed to whites yet nurtured a uniquely African American playing style. This was black baseball's finest hour: at once a source of great ethnic pride and a hard won pathway for integration into the mainstream.

Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931

Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931
Author: Michael E. Lomax
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2014-06-27
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0815652828

As the companion volume to Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860–1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary, Lomax’s new book continues to chronicle the history of black baseball in the United States. The first volume traced the development of baseball from an exercise in community building among African Americans in the pre–Civil War era to a commercialized amusement and a rare and lucrative opportunity for entrepreneurship within the black community. In this book, Lomax takes a closer look at the marketing and promotion of the Negro Leagues by black baseball magnates. He explores how race influenced black baseball’s institutional development and shaped the business relationship with white clubs and managers. Lomax analyzes the decisions that black baseball magnates made to insulate themselves from outside influences. He explains how this insulation may have distorted their perceptions and ultimately led to the Negro Leagues’ demise. The collapse of the Negro Leagues by 1931 was, Lomax argues, “a dream deferred in the overall African American pursuit for freedom and self-determination.”

Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901

Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901
Author: Michael E. Lomax
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003-04-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780815607861

Here is the first in-depth account of the birth of black baseball and its dramatic passage from grass-roots venture to commercial enterprise. In the late nineteenth century resourceful black businessmen founded ball teams that became the Negro Leagues. Racial bias aside, they faced vast odds, from the need to court white sponsors to negotiating ball parks. With no blacks in cities, they barnstormed small towns to attract fans, employing all manner of gimmickry to rouse attention. Drawing on major newspapers and obscure African-American journals, the author explores the diverse forces that shaped minority baseball. He looks unflinchingly at prejudice in amateur and pro circles and constant inadequate press coverage. He assesses the impact of urbanization, migration, and the rise of northern ghettoes, and he applauds those bold innovators who forged black baseball into a parallel club that appealed to whites yet nurtured a uniquely African American playing style. This was black baseball's finest hour: at once a source of great ethnic pride and a hard won pathway for integration into the mainstream.

Before Jackie Robinson

Before Jackie Robinson
Author: Gerald R. Gems
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2017-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0803296703

While the accomplishments and influence of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali are doubtless impressive solely on their merits, these luminaries of the Black sporting experience did not emerge spontaneously. Their rise was part of a gradual evolution in social and power relations in American culture between the 1890s and 1940s that included athletes such as jockey Isaac Murphy, barnstorming pilot Bessie Coleman, and golfer Teddy Rhodes. The contributions of these early athletes to our broader collective history, and their heroic confrontations with the entrenched racism of their times, helped bring about the incremental changes that after 1945 allowed for sports to be more fully integrated. Before Jackie Robinson details and analyzes the lives of these lesser-known but important athletes within the broader history of Black liberation. These figures not only excelled in their given sports but also transcended class and racial divides in making inroads into popular culture despite the societal restrictions placed on them. They were also among the first athletes to blur the line between athletics, entertainment, and celebrity culture. This volume presents a more nuanced account of early Black American athletes’ lives and their ongoing struggle for acceptance, relevance, and personal and group identity.

Sport and Entrepreneurship

Sport and Entrepreneurship
Author: Dilwyn Porter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1000051056

Sport and Entrepreneurship combines perspectives derived from business history and sports history, focusing on the important but relatively unexplored relationship of entrepreneurship and sport. This important volume offers clearer definitions of both sports products and sports entrepreneurship, gives due regard to social entrepreneurs, and assesses the continuing relevance of Hardy’s pioneering study from the 1980s. Hardy himself provides an introduction to the volume, and chapters by Wray Vamplew and Dilwyn Porter supply an overarching theoretical framework, offering new ways of identifying and describing sports-related entrepreneurial activity. Each chapter explores a particular case study, focusing on specific examples of entrepreneurship as it has been practised in a variety of sporting contexts from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries, ranging from 19th century equestrianism, to 20th century ice hockey, and football in the 21st century and covering entrepreneurship in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom. Each, in its own way, adds depth and complexity to the discussion. Bridging the gap between sports history and business history, too often seen as separate spheres, Sport and Entrepreneurship will be of great interest to scholars of sport history, business and sport, business history, and entrepreneurship. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Forgotten History of African American Baseball

The Forgotten History of African American Baseball
Author: Lawrence D. Hogan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2014-01-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

This text gives readers the chance to experience the unique character and personalities of the African American game of baseball in the United States, starting from the time of slavery, through the Negro Leagues and integration period, and beyond. For 100 years, African Americans were barred from playing in the premier baseball leagues of the United States—where only Caucasians were allowed. Talented black athletes until the 1950s were largely limited to only playing in Negro leagues, or possibly playing against white teams in exhibition, post-season play, or barnstorming contests—if it was deemed profitable for the white hosts. Even so, the people and events of Jim Crow baseball had incredible beauty, richness, and quality of play and character. The deep significance of Negro baseball leagues in establishing the texture of American history is an experience that cannot be allowed to slip away and be forgotten. This book takes readers from the origins of African Americans playing the American game of baseball on southern plantations in the pre-Civil War era through Black baseball and America's long era of Jim Crow segregation to the significance of Black baseball within our modern-day, post-Civil Rights Movement perspective.

The Coal Barons Played Cuban Giants

The Coal Barons Played Cuban Giants
Author: Paul Browne
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-04-06
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786492937

The Pennsylvania state leagues of the 1880s and 1890s rank among the most interesting minor leagues in the history of baseball. The rules were changing, the world around baseball, particularly the economy, was changing and things that would seem impossible in a later time were happening every year. These leagues had not only black players but also wholly black teams. They had great major leaguers--on their way up but also on the way back down. In fact, the greatest player of the age, surrounded by what would have been a major league all-star team only a few years before, played in a Pennsylvania minor league for almost a full season. The play was exciting, the players were exciting and the owners, managers and league politics were often more interesting than the games.

Celebrating Ourselves

Celebrating Ourselves
Author: Daryl Russell Grigsby
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2010-11
Genre: African American baseball players
ISBN: 1608447987

Celebrating Ourselves demonstrates how baseball is intricately woven in the fabric ofAfrican-American family, social and political life. Beyond the significant accomplishments on the diamond, well-recounted here, baseball knitted generations, taught perseverance, demonstrated economic independence and been a forum for civil rights and equality. From Moses FleetwoodWalker in 1884 to the founding of the Negro National League in 1920; from Jackie Robinson in 1947 to today's Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI); the game is connected with personal achievement, community advancement, economic independence and social equality. This book discusses baseball from three perspectives; from the player, the fan and the family.Alongside statistics and accomplishments on the field, we read of the perseverance and dedication of the African-American baseball fan.Much has been made of the decline in baseball's popularity among black Americans. When observers ask, 'Where is the African- American fan?' this book boldly responds, 'Right here '

A Game of Inches

A Game of Inches
Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 663
Release: 2006
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1566636779

"The scope of A Game of Inches is encyclopedic, with nearly a thousand entries that illuminate the origins of items ranging from catchers' masks to hook slides to intentional walks to cork-center baseballs. But this is much more than just a reference guide. Along the way, award-winning author Peter Morris has a sharp eye for the telling quote and the entertaining anecdote. He explains the context that led each new feature of the game to emerge when it did, and chronicles the often surprising responses to these innovations."--BOOK JACKET.