York Yankees Research Articles

Assessing Knowledge of Appropriate Sunscreen Guidelines and Skin Cancer Prevention Among New York Yankees Attendees

Assessing Knowledge of Appropriate Sunscreen Guidelines and Skin Cancer Prevention Among New York Yankees Attendees

The Canadian Apprenticeship of Jazz-Age Baseball Superstar Urban Shocker

The pitcher Urban Shocker—who was once one of Babe Ruth’s most successful antagonists before be-coming his teammate on the legendary 1927 New York Yankees—underwent his formative baseball training inCanada. Today Urban Shocker is best known as a star pitcher with the St. Louis Browns and New York Yankees,but he also had important connections to Canada, which are no longer as well known. This article examines thefact that Shocker initially honed his impressive skills in Windsor, Ottawa, and Toronto.

Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles over Workers’ Rights and American Empire by Robert Elias and Peter Dreier

Reviewed by: Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles over Workers’ Rights and American Empire by Robert Elias and Peter Dreier Mark McGee Robert Elias and Peter Dreier. Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles over Workers’ Rights and American Empire. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022. 336 pp. Cloth, $38.00. Any book with the word “rebel” in its title is going to attract my attention, as people who have not been happy with the way things are and fight for change are fascinating to me. With a foreword written by former Major League pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee I was further convinced I was going to like this book before I ever started a chapter. Authors Robert Elias and Peter Dreier didn’t disappointment me with their book Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles over Workers’ Rights and American Empire. This is an extensive examination of the often-dark side of baseball from a business standpoint with players in battles over low pay, overall treatment, and racism. The authors skillfully show how baseball owners in the late 1800s mimicked the businessmen of the day, who took advantage of their workers in every way possible in order to fill their pockets. The revolt of players during [End Page 120] the era known as the “Gilded Age” sets the stage for future dissent among baseball players. Labor issues, the way pro baseball deals with events such as wars, patriotism, and segregation are all examined under a harsh light. But into the light they thrust many players a reader may not have heard about before. Every baseball fan knows, or should know, Curt Flood unsuccessfully fought the reserve clause through legal channels. But as the authors point out, players across all pro leagues received an education in how the reserve clause worked with players being treated as property rather than human beings. Flood saw his baseball career end as a result of his beliefs, but he laid the foundation for the multimillionaire players of today. Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, is legendary for making the union successful after years of false starts. But Elias and Dreier also give readers in- depth looks at players like Jim O’Rourke, Tim Keefe, Danny Gardella, and Tony Lupien, to name a few rebellious players profiled in the book whose names aren’t in the mainstream. One of the more interesting parts of the book is how the Mexican League, which provided a safe haven for Black players, attracted several major league players through higher salaries. Jorge Pasquel owned the league and was a thorn in the side of major league owners for many years with some big- name players making the move south of the border. His challenge to Major League Baseball would end as his money eventually ran out. Any book about baseball rebels has to include pitcher Jim Bouton, author of the infamous book Ball Four. Bouton, already known as a player who didn’t mind challenging the New York Yankees, his first major league team, was banned from old-timers’ day at Yankee Stadium. Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of baseball at the time the book was published, tried to influence Bouton to say publicly his stories in the book were more imaginative than accurate. A threat throughout the book is how baseball purists— including owners, executives, sports writers, and even some players—tried to protest the sport as being untarnished in any way. Elias and Dreier dedicate their book to Terry Cannon, Bouton, Flood, and Miller. All were true rebels in the eyes of the baseball establishment, so it was fitting they were chosen. The only complaint about the book is the authors often let their political views and beliefs show through instead of merely letting the facts tell the story. They destroy the myth that baseball is as American as apple pie. Some baseball purists may not enjoy what Elias and Dreier have to say, but I found the book to be well researched and interesting on many levels. [End Page 121] Copyright © 2023 University of Nebraska Press

The Borderlands

The Borderlands

An Analysis of the Competition between Universal and Disney

One of the strangest feuds on the internet is the battle between Universal and Disney loyalists. Based on scale, it’s a lot like fans of the Hartford Yard Goats hating the New York Yankees, but the Goats have shown a lot of promise in recent years. They hired a wizard back in 2010 and have risen fast after that. Think of them as a team full of top prospects with plenty of potential. Universal’s problem is that they didn’t get their start until 1990. They’re effectively an expansion team compared to Disney, who founded the theme park industry in 1955. To my mind, Universal has done a tremendous job in catching up over the past decade. In 2009, they had only 23.7 million guests. By 2017, that number had more than doubled to 49.5 million. Disney’s still tripled them with 150 million annual park visits, though.

Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir by Greg Larson

Reviewed by: Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir by Greg Larson Roberta J. Newman Greg Larson. Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 247 pp. Cloth, $27.95. Clubbie: A Minor League Memoir is Greg Larson's breezy account of his two-season tenure as clubhouse manager for the Aberdeen IronBirds, the shortseason A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles in the now-defunct New York Penn League. Self-admittedly not talented enough to play professional baseball at any level, Larson chronicles his attempts to keep the team's players fed and equipped, coaches happy, all the while trying to convince himself that he is a participant in the game. At times, he succeeds, though his attitude toward his job and his performance varies. Larson enters the clubhouse with more than a soupcon of fanboy naivete. His lack of sophistication is apparent in his choice to bring a Minnesota Twins blanket with him to his new job, expressing his concern that he will not be accepted by members of an Orioles' farm team. The players do not care. More striking is his lack of knowledge about the conditions under which the players he serves labor. One look at the Orioles' development guide disabuses him of the notion that A level baseball is a lucrative undertaking. Of his reaction to discovering that none of Aberdeen's players are paid more than $1,300 per month during the season, he writes, "Look, I didn't think Minor leaguers made Alex Rodriguez money (30 million a year), but I had no understanding of the astronomical difference between Major League and Minor League salaries," (30). Once they have paid him their seven-dollar dues and remitted rent to their landlords, if they have them, he realizes that IronBird players barely earn enough to survive. In return for their seven dollars—one more than they pay other single-A equipment managers—Larson does their laundry, dispenses balls, bats, and uniforms, and provides meals, often amounting to little more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and leftovers from the luxury suite spreads. In fact, he initially resists spending anything on food until he is admonished by a coach. But he learns, and serving enough food for [End Page 271] the least possible outlay becomes a source of personal pride. He leaves at the end of each of his two seasons with more money than the players. This is only a minor source of guilt. Throughout his memoir, Larson, who is a stand-up comedian, among other pursuits, attempts to tell his story with humor. He peppers the narrative with anecdotes from inside the clubhouse. One of his favorite sources and targets is pitching coach Alan Mills, whose self-professed claim to fame is his temper. Above all, Mills seems to be proudest of the fact that he once punched Daryl Strawberry during a 1998 benches-clearing brawl between the Orioles and the New York Yankees—a story Mills tells repeatedly whether or not anyone asks. Larson's fondness for Mills is apparent throughout, perhaps because, as the coach also never tires of reminding the author, he was also a clubbie before making it big. Larson is generally amused by Mills's explosive temper until he is the brunt of it halfway through the author's second season. Chastised by Mills for giving lousy tickets to the family of a pitching prospect, Larson describes the encounter in this way: "The whites of his eyes expanded and he leaned in toward me. 'You'll know when I'm in your face, meat, and this aint it.' He let his look linger for a second before walking out. In that moment I'd seen a single fierce glimpse—one movie frame—of the man who'd punched Darryl Strawberry, Brian Graham, and damn near half of the 1993 Seattle Mariners" (185). However, his opinion of Mills remains unchanged. While Larson's memoir is written with humor, it tends to trade in baseball cliches. Among the oldest of his chestnuts is "Baseball taught me how to love"(9), followed shortly thereafter by "Baseball taught me how to have my heart broken" (10) without as much as...

1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK by David Krell

Reviewed by: 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK by David Krell Mark McGee David Krell. 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 384 pp. Cloth, $34.95. The old jingle for Certs mints ads used to tout they were "two, two, two mints in one." Well, 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK is three, three, three books in one. Somehow managing to have it all make sense, David Krell takes readers through an exhaustively researched mix of baseball, history, and pop culture. There is plenty of baseball here, enough for any fan. Nineteen sixty-two saw the expansion of the National League with the addition of the Houston Colt .45s and what would be legendarily known as the hapless New York Mets. The year before, the American League had brought in the Los Angeles Angels and a second incarnation of the Washington Senators. As evidence of his extensive research, Krell provides detailed and often colorful profiles on the players who would make up the first rosters of these expansion teams. Drama on the field was heavy on the West Coast with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants needing a playoff game to determine the NL pennant winner. The Giants prevailed and went on to the World Series where they lost 4–3 to the New York Yankees. The Dodgers may have lost the pennant, but 1962 found the team playing in Dodger Stadium. Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley made sure his new stadium in Chavez Ravine had every amenity a player or fan might want. As Krell discusses, the road to building Dodger Stadium was filled with obstacles ranging from negotiations for mineral rights with the city, the construction of an oil well, and disgruntled residents having to move from the area. Krell reveals how Houston and New York used the leverage of the Continental League, which never got off the ground, in order to land their teams. Just like the Colt .45s and the Mets, the Dodgers and Giants rosters of 1962 [End Page 269] are colorfully and extensively profiled, from Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers through Giants stars Willie Mays and Willie McCovey along with lesser players. The New York Yankees, winners of the 1962 World Series against the Giants, also are given similar treatment along with a game-by-game review of the Fall Classic. Krell's grasps of history and popular culture are equally as researched. There are thirty-three pages of notes as evidence of his hard work, including telephone interviews dating back several years from publication. There are surprise nuggets all throughout the book. How many times are you going to find the rise and fall of "Romper Room's" original host Sherri Chessen and the sad life of Marilyn Monroe chronicled in the same volume along with the debuts of The Beatles and The Beach Boys and the complexities of pitcher Bo Belinsky? Readers are taken on trips through the opening days of the space race with President Kennedy making what then seemed an impossible goal of reaching the moon by the end of the decade. They are there as Kennedy deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which put Russia and the United States on the path to nuclear war for thirteen tension filled days. On a lighter note, Krell provides insight into what people were watching on television, what movies they were buying tickets for, what plays were shining on Broadway marquees, and what books were at the top of the bestseller lists. In addition to the usual digging into newspaper and magazine articles and videos, Krell tracked down many personal interviews, including some of those involved in the times like actress Stephanie Powers. When those who were making a name for themselves in 1962 were no longer alive, Krell uses previously published interviews as well as one-on-one interviews with their children such as Chris Lemmon's remembrances of his father, Academy Award winning actor Jack Lemmon and Katherine Quinn, widow of Anthony Quinn, about his movies screened in 1962. As an exclamation point on the depth of Krell's research...

Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign against Its Biggest Star by Edmund F. Wehrle

Reviewed by: Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign against Its Biggest Star by Edmund F. Wehrle Robert L Beach (bio) Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign against Its Biggest Star By Edmund F. Wehrle. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018. 302 pages, 12 halftones, 6" x 9". $29.95 cloth, $29.95 ebook. Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign against Its Biggest Star By Edmund F. Wehrle. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018. 302 pages, 12 halftones, 6" x 9". $29.95 cloth, $29.95 ebook. In breaking Major League Baseball's restrictive "reserve clause," the 1972 Supreme Court case Flood v. Kuhn was a turning point in player empowerment. In the years since, sports fandom has come to take an individual player's influence in everything from controlling their media coverage and negotiating contracts, to affecting social change (as NBA players have done with Black Lives Matter and 2020 voter registration drives) as a given, a perk of achieving the highest level of sport. Athletes' individual agency in the era before Flood v. Kuhn has only become a subject of consideration in recent years, as historians and other scholars have subjected the lore of sport through a much more critical lens. The commonly held view is that prior to the integration battles of the 1960s, athletes tended to passively toe the industry line. Though uncovering significant levels of conflict between players and management prior to the 1960s, Babe Ruth's role in these conflicts has remained whetted to what Edmund F. Werhle suggests was an "essentially frozen" media constructed image of Ruth as a "talented, alluring, overgrown adolescent who never grew up" (185). Attempts to critically analyze the Ruthian myth, beginning with Marshall Smelser's 1975 The Life that Ruth Built and continuing through Wayne Stewart's 2006 Babe Ruth: A Biography, successfully exposed the ways in which sportswriters and Ruth's handlers capitalized on Ruth's popularity and constructed his image to maximize his value. In his book, Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign against Its Biggest Star, Wehrle probes further, asking new questions about Ruth's place in baseball history. In ten chapters, he recasts Ruth as a much more assertive and independent force challenging the institutional power of Major League Baseball. He also reframes the sporting press's coverage of Ruth, as more than simply a promotional tool, but also one of control. He argues that while the New York Yankees, and baseball generally, benefitted wildly from Ruth's on-field play, they also viewed him as a threat to the stability of the game and thus actively sought to "break" the star. They did so by controlling the media narrative around Ruth, capitalizing on his triumphs to draw fans, and using his flaws as a way to both control the Babe (during his conflicts with management) and transform the game (during his triumphant comebacks). While Ruth is the subject, the primary characters in this study are the sportswriters who crafted Ruth's public image, and the league and team officials (Yankee Manager Ed Barrow, Owner-Colonels Ruppert and Huston, various league presidents, and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis, primary among these) who had the best access to them during a critical moment in professional baseball's early growth. [End Page 233] Ruth's career began during a crisis moment in baseball history, a culmination of long-running threats to the organizational structure of the sport, from player unions and rival leagues, to persistent in-game violence, and critically, from associations with gambling. The 1919 World Series was marred by the infamous Black Sox scandal, and the emergence of Ruth as a star in Boston, being sold to the upstart Yankees in New York, was a tremendous opportunity to reinvent baseball. Wehrle reviews the familiar and long-accepted narrative of Ruth's rise, then complicates it by highlighting Ruth's involvement with MLB's rival Federal League, shipbuilder leagues during World War I, and his role in the Players Fraternity. If mentioned at all in previous studies, these incidents were viewed simply as more evidence of Ruth's youthful naivety. Wehrle interprets these actions on Ruth's terms and follows this pattern through Ruth's professional career...

Comeback Pitchers: The Remarkable Careers of Howard Ehmke and Jack Quin by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg

Reviewed by: Comeback Pitchers: The Remarkable Careers of Howard Ehmke and Jack Quin by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg Frank G. Houdek Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg. Comeback Pitchers: The Remarkable Careers of Howard Ehmke and Jack Quinn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 512 pp. Cloth, $39.95. As one would expect from authors as experienced and decorated as Spatz and Steinberg, Comeback Pitchers is a well-researched, well-documented, well-illustrated, and well-written account of the up-and-down baseball lives of two accomplished moundsmen, Howard Ehmke and Jack Quinn, whose careers spanned the last years of the Dead Ball Era and the first decade of the Lively Ball Era. Though largely forgotten today, Spatz and Steinberg seek to restore the reputations of Quinn and Ehmke by offering ample evidence of the character and talent which helped each earn the admiration of not only their baseball peers but also contemporary fans and press. Regarding Spatz and Steinberg, most NINE readers will be familiar with the quality and quantity of their work. Between them they have produced eighteen baseball-related books as well as articles and chapters too numerous to count. Comeback Pitchers is their third collaboration, following 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, recipient of SABR's Seymour Medal as the best book of baseball history in 2010, and The Colonel and the Hug: The Partnership that Transformed the New York Yankees, winner of SABR's Baseball Research Award in 2016. Enough said. As baseball historian/writers, they are the real deal. Similarly, not much need be said about the impressive research behind Comeback Pitchers, except to note that 355 pages of text are followed by eighty-two pages of endnotes and an eleven-page bibliography. The writing is crystal clear, and the storytelling is engaging—readers will keep turning pages to find out what happens next in the baseball careers of the book's two protagonists. Finally, fifty photographs, many from Steinberg's personal collection, not only bring to life the book's word descriptions of Ehmke, "tall and lanky" (36), and Quinn, "solidly built" (206), but also are evocative of the game they played a century ago. Although they have written in the past about "some of the most memorable names in baseball history," in Comeback Pitchers Spatz and Steinberg choose to focus "not [on] headliners but rather men who contribute to their teams' success while occasionally flirting with stardom." They believe that Ehmke and Quinn "personify those qualities" (xv). They also understand that even athletes who attain the highest level of their sport "confront major challenges" over their careers, including injuries, aging and erosion of skills, and questions about their commitment. Although teammates on both the Red Sox and Athletics, [End Page 276] it was their ongoing struggles with such challenges that made them ideal as joint subjects for Spatz and Steinberg. Criticism "for both fragility and a lack of competitive spirit" would "haunt" Ehmke throughout his career (106), while Quinn was already considered old when, at age thirty-four, he returned to the majors in 1918 with the White Sox after losing twenty-two games in the Federal League and playing for two years in the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The purpose of Comeback Pitchers is to show their strength and perseverance in meeting these challenges, not just once but over and over again. Spatz and Steinberg write that "[h]ad there been a Comeback Player of the Year Award when Ehmke and Quinn played, each would have been in contention several seasons" (xv). Comeback Pitchers details how these men overcame disappointments and low expectations to achieve startling, even record-setting success over their long lives in organized baseball (Ehmke, from 1914, with the Class AA Los Angeles Angels, to 1930, with the Philadelphia Athletics; Quinn, from 1907, with the Class C Macon Brigands, to 1933, with the Cincinnati Reds). For instance, after Ehmke suffered through an "awful 1915 season at Buffalo [of the Federal League] and being laughed at by [manager] Frank Chance" when he tried out with the PCL's Angels, he responded with "one of the greatest Minor League pitching seasons ever...

Train the human, not the dog.

Train the human, not the dog.

Taking Your LUMPs: Major League Baseball's History of Pitchers Failing to Retire a Single Batter in an Outing

Taking Your LUMPsMajor League Baseball's History of Pitchers Failing to Retire a Single Batter in an Outing Josh Chetwynd (bio) From Hall of Famers to hurlers who threw just once in the big leagues, Lamentably Unproductive Mound Performances (LUMPs) are a thing. A popular baseball aphorism is that it's a sport built on failure. Famed journalist George Vecsey put it succinctly: Baseball "acknowledges daily failure."1 Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. went into more detail: "Baseball is a game of frustration and failure in many ways," he explained in an 2016 interview.2 "As a hitter, you fail 7 out of 10 times, so you have to figure out how to deal with failure quite a bit." But if that general point is accurate for hitters, it's fair to say that the mirror opposite is true for pitchers. Consider that the league-wide average on base percentage in 2019 was .323.3 Even accounting for sacrifice hits and players who reach on errors, pitchers are typically successful in retiring opposing hitters well more than 60 percent of the time. For that reason, when a player in the starting line up goes 0-for-4 or a pinch hitter strikes out in his only at bat, we may sigh with disappointment, but it certainly doesn't feel odd. After all, we all remember that baseball hitters are set up for failure. But what about when pitchers have comprehensively failed appearances? In other words, they come into a game and were unable to get a single out before being pulled. This type of failure is unexpected. Still, over the years it's happened thousands of times at the major league level. A pitcher entered a contest, faced at least one batter, and failed to retire even one hitter. In the past, some have called this type of pitching performance a "no outer" or, if a run was scored off that unsuccessful pitcher, an "infinite ERA."4 [End Page 155] However, for purposes here, these situations are named LUMPs (Lamentably Unproductive Mound Performances). The reason for this sobriquet is that if there's an expectation that pitchers will offer event the minimum utility of registering a single out, there should be a term which serves as a type of onomatopoeia to describe the ignominy of this difficult and disappointing experience. With the terminology established, this article aims to offer a survey of Major League Baseball's long history of LUMPs. The first thing to know about these situations is that, for the most part, pitchers who've experienced LUMPs at baseball's highest level should not be defined by those moments. Thankfully, most aren't. Consider this: More than two dozen Hall of Fame starting pitchers suffered at least one LUMP in their playing days. Luminaries such as Sandy Koufax, Early Wynn, Red Ruffing, Rube Marquard, Bob Lemon and Red Faber all had at least two in their distinguished careers. Of course, for these greats—and probably many others—there can be extenuating circumstances for such terrible days. For instance, Nolan Ryan, who took three LUMPs in his career, suffered his final no-out start in his last appearance ever on September 22, 1993.5 The Ryan Express faced just six Seattle Mariners batters, allowing them all to reach base—two via hits and four through walks. That said, Ryan may have avoided the LUMP if not for the fact that in the midst of that effort he felt a pop in his elbow, forcing him to leave the mound for the very last time. Similarly, Tom Glavine got a LUMP when he departed against the Chicago Cubs on May 16, 1989, after just four hitters—all of whom collected hits.6 But he would have probably stuck around if not for spraining his ankle. Off-the-field influences can also lead to such performances. Take Whitey Ford's LUMP on May 10, 1954, against the Cleveland Indians.7 The New York Yankees great gave up three runs on a hit and two base-on-balls. He didn't get an out and gave way to reliever Bob Kuzava, who promptly delivered his own LUMP, yielding four hits...

In the Log Cabin with My Favorite Player: Appreciating Traditional American Masculinity Through Homoerotic Language in Baseball Fandom

On the website r/NYYankees, a sub-forum (“subreddit”) of Reddit is devoted to the Major League Baseball team New York Yankees, with its predominantly male users showing their appreciation for baseball heroes by expressing erotic desires towards the players. When a player performs well, the subreddit is filled with admiration of desires to become the player’s intimate lover―explicitly expressed by “male” fans. This paper explains the phenomenon of young male fans’ desire for the now-lost model of traditional masculinity of domination and control, displayed in the context of baseball players’ dominant performances. The discrepancy between a fan’s non-homosexual real-world self and his homoerotic language on the subreddit is explained using the “performative fandom” theory, developed by Osborne and Coombs borrowing Butler’s notion of performativity. This paper suggests how this desire for traditional masculinity serves as recognition to the collapse of masculinity in the modern American society.

New York Yankees and Hollywood Anglos: The persistence of Anglo‐conformity in the American motion picture industry

AbstractIdeal types have received less attention than membership criteria in the ethnicity and nationalism literature. This article uses crowdsourced genealogical data and onomastics software to show that British Isles surnames and ancestry remain over‐represented among American actors, especially in roles connected with the national narrative. Conformity to the WASP ideal type persists despite the fact American actors are disproportionately born in Los Angeles, New York, and other large cities, where British ancestry is rare. Jewish actors are over‐represented, yet many have Anglo surnames. Compared to athletes and politicians, actors are significantly more likely to have Anglo surnames, especially those in genres depicting the nation. After declining among cohorts of stars born between the 1800s and 1961, the share of British Isles surnames has stabilised and remains in the majority. We argue that despite rising diversity, this reflects the continuing importance of the Anglo‐Protestant ethnic imago for American national identity.

Motor City Champs: Mickey Cochrane and the 1934-1935 Detroit Tigers by Scott Ferkovich

132 The Michigan Historical Review guided Henry Ford’s abiding interests in “making men.” Throughout the book, she challenges other historians’ conclusions that Ford was racially progressive since he hired large numbers of African Americans. The company’s relationship to black workers was actually more complex. Inside the Rouge, which employed most of Ford’s African American workers, managers relegated them to dangerous jobs in the foundry. At the same time, Ford furthered racial apartheid in Dearborn by relegating black homebuyers to the underdeveloped and underserviced community of Inkster. At the company’s Richmond Hill plantation in Georgia, Ford officials tested malaria drugs on local African Americans and pursued a vision of racial uplift that only allowed for rural occupations in the manual arts. While the company did employ blacks at the Rouge, the Ford plant in Port Elizabeth excluded them completely, as the company honored South African color-bar rules of employment. While Esch skillfully and engagingly reconstructs Ford’s global history, the book neglects the significance of union struggles—especially the campaigns of the United Auto Workers (UAW)—in the company’s history. Why did Henry Ford’s power ultimately waver and give rise to organized worker resistance? Why did the UAW fail to take on the transnational scope of Fordism? What were the implications of the union’s limited view for the labor movement in the US and abroad? Despite these unanswered questions, Esch’s study is a great achievement. Gregory Wood Frostburg State University Scott Ferkovich. Motor City Champs: Mickey Cochrane and the 1934-1935 Detroit Tigers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland (McFarlandBooks.com), 2018. Pp. 236. Bibliography. Illustrations. Notes. Paper: $29.95. “We Want Tigers, Not Tame Kittens,” roared a Detroit Free Press headline of 1933 that echoed the public opinion of the city’s atypically maligned major-league baseball team. As the following year’s season dawned, it was twenty-five years since the Detroit Tigers had played in a World Series, and the club had never won the Fall Classic, not even when superstar Ty Cobb was in tether. Such complaints roiled a populace already bothered by real-world worries, and they made Frank Navin, the team’s owner since 1902, determined to achieve the supremacy for which he dearly longed. When Navin acquired Mickey Cochrane, the Book Reviews 133 Philadelphia Athletics’ heady, hard-hitting catcher, and made him Detroit’s player-manager for 1934, he set the wheels in motion for the Tigers’ two greatest back-to-back seasons—a period capped by Detroit’s first major sports championship of any kind. In Motor City Champs: Mickey Cochrane and the 1934-1935 Detroit Tigers, Scott Ferkovich takes us through the two American League pennantwinning seasons—and their climactic World Series outcomes. The Tigers were edged by the St. Louis Cardinals in the maximum seven Series games in 1934, but they defeated the Chicago Cubs in six 1935 contests, the last of which was played in Detroit and sent the city into a frenzy. As Ferkovich relates in his strongly researched book, the Tigers featured a cast of distinctive characters—a “bevy of smart, aggressive position players who fought for every inch the opposition would allow” (p. 2). Among the stars were Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe, a homespun pitcher from Arkansas who came out of nowhere to reel off sixteen victories in a row in 1934 (and whose “How’m I doin’, Edna?” quip to his sweetheart back home during a network radio interview became a national catchphrase); soft-spoken, saxophone-playing second baseman Charlie Gehringer, nicknamed the “Mechanical Man” for his reliability; fanfavorite outfielders Leon “Goose” Goslin and Jo-Jo White; and slugging first baseman Hank Greenberg, the game’s first great Jewish star. Under the guidance of the intense Cochrane, the Tigers kept even the New York Yankees and their fading superstar, Babe Ruth, from the top of the standings with their dynamic brand of ball. Relying on primary-source material, including many seldom-seen photographs, Ferkovich’s book smoothly takes the reader through the peaks and valleys of each season without bogging down with overuse of statistics and play-by-play accounts. His nuts-and-bolts approach makes Motor City Champs a nice...

Positive Presage: Baseball’s Arrival Signaled Better Days Were Ahead

Positive PresageBaseball’s Arrival Signaled Better Days Were Ahead Greg Ford (bio) Baseball was never my favorite sport growing up; I was a football fan. However, our national pastime has been part of my life, provided many memorable moments, and always served as an omen of better days ahead. I can still remember the first three Major League Baseball games I ever attended. The first came in July 1968, when my sister took myself and our mother to watch the Washington Senators—now the Texas Rangers—host the Chicago White Sox. What little I recall consists of the White Sox hitting homer after homer off Senator pitching, and when I recently found the box score from that contest, I discovered I had a something of a good memory. The truth is the White Sox hit only two homers that evening, one in the first inning by Luis Aparicio and another in the second by Duane Josephson. However, it was enough to propel them to a 4–2 win. The Senators, who went on to have another losing season, got a measure of revenge the following day, downing the boys from the Windy City’s south side 8–4. I became something of a Senators follower after that, which was a hard thing to be, considering the team’s consistent efforts at staying below average. The one time they weren’t was a year later, in 1969, when they finished fourth in the American League East with a record of 86–76. A few years later, they left Washington after two dismal seasons and found a home in Arlington, Texas. It was also in 1969 when I viewed my second live contest. My uncle, his two sons and myself attended a Chicago Cubs-Los Angeles Dodgers contest at Dodger Stadium. The Cubs, who led the National League East at the time, prevailed 4–0. It would just be a short time later that the men from the Windy City’s north side would suffer one of Major League Baseball’s greatest late-season collapses. That occurred when the New York Mets, the miracle team of that season, overtook them, and captured not only the National League’s Eastern Division, [End Page 75] but the pennant and the World Series title as well. Less than a year later, in late May, I got to see those same Mets rally to beat the Houston Astros 4–3 at Shea Stadium. One might ask that if I am not a die-hard baseball fan, then how come I remember those three games so vividly? Well, they were the only ones I attended during that stretch, so it’s pretty easy to recall each of them and what happened. Also, they took place during an innocent stage of my life, when I wasn’t paying much attention to the world around me, and when sports, whether on television or in person, was a place where larger-than-life heroes displayed their talents. If they wore the uniform of your favorite team, all the better. Also, even as a child, I understood the arrival of another baseball season meant the coming of better weather. Don’t knock it. When you’re growing up in the Northeast, winters and the accompanying snow, ice and freezing temperatures can be pretty depressing. In my case, I lived in Connecticut, a state with the stereotype of having great schools, because there isn’t anything else to do. Arguably, there is a lot of truth to that, and during the winter, it can get pretty monotonous, unless one finds a place to go sledding or skiing. Then, starting in March, spring training began. By early April, the New York Yankees and Mets—they were the two teams whose games were available for viewing in my area—would open their respective seasons and begin nearly daily broadcasts of home and away contests. That was especially exciting as a little kid, when, sometimes either team, or even both, would televise afternoon games. It was actually quite a treat to come home from school and watch a game, something I could not do with football or basketball. More importantly, as the baseball season...

The "Sucker List" and the Evolution of American Business Fraud

The "Sucker List" and the Evolution of American Business Fraud Edward J. Balleisen (bio) in the early 1950S, mickey mantle burst onto the american sporting scene as a power-hitting outfielder for the New York Yankees. After a bumpy first year in the majors in 1951, this young man from rural Oklahoma soon became a star, attracting close attention from fans, the press, and promoters of all kinds. As a 1957 article in the Saturday Evening Post recounted, Mantle proved especially willing to listen to the pitchmen who promised to multiply his new sources of income. Within a mere week of arriving in New York City, he had signed a contract with a predatory agent who generously promised to secure all manner of endorsement and business deals, modestly reserving a full 50 percent of Mantle's earnings. Over the next few years, the Yankee phenom periodically took flyers on a series of ill-advised investments, including $3500 ($1000 paid in cash, the rest through a promissory note) for shares in a fake Oklahoma insurance company, hawked by a notorious sharper "who had served three prison terms and had an 'FBI file an inch thick.'" Mantle's remarkable lack of financial acumen meant that he "led the sucker list." And yet, the Saturday Evening Post profile also noted that Mantle learned from his mistakes rather quickly. By 1957, he had employed a reputable agent who identified excellent endorsement opportunities, which dramatically increased his income (Povich 1957, 19–20). This vignette incorporates several key features of the broader history of deception and misrepresentation in American marketplaces. [End Page 699] In the young Mantle, one can see several stock figures: the country bumpkin, the callow youth, and the credulous celebrity, but also the savvy pupil who became "more wise" through instruction in the school of wily charades. In the brief depiction of those who eagerly sized up Mantle and took advantage of him, one gets a sense of the omnipresent American snake-oil salesmen who have found fertile ground in a society that has often celebrated entrepreneurial innovation and aggressive marketing. That same discussion hints at the steady growth of antifraud institutions that took aim at duplicitous economic actors, shared intelligence about them across government agencies and jurisdictions, and at least sometimes curtailed their capacity to operate. Taken as a whole, the Saturday Evening Post article contributed to a longstanding public discourse about all the lies lurking throughout American commerce, a dialogue that sought to caution consumers and investors but simultaneously offered pointers to those who would deceive. A SONG OF SAFETY My morning mail is a penance to me. Long, fat envelopes meet my eyes, Filled with advice that is proffered free, Telling of many a wondrous prize. Old hooks baited with new disguise, Bundles of bunkum, a daily grist, New revamping of same old lies—PLEASE take my name off the Sucker List! Hawkers from Maine to the western sea, Selling unsalable merchandise. Proffer me many a golden key—Me, who've been bitten in too many buys. Towers with no roof but the bright blue skies, You and my earnings good-by I've kissed! I have sought plums in poor fruitless pies—Please take MY name off the Sucker List! Booms in oil? (bring my snickersnee!) Rising industrials? Let 'em rise! All my visions of Araby Are gone where the last year's bird's nest lies. I'm a year older—I hope more wise! Dreams of Golconda? I can resist. Buy for a fall? Then watch things rise! Please take my name OFF the sucker list! ENVOI Prints and pamphlets, circulars free, That paper the nation so lavishly. Let me alone. You'll never be missed! PLEASE TAKE MY NAME OFF THE SUCKER LIST! —Anonymous, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Jan. 13,1926 The Mantle profile also referenced, without comment, a specific tool of duplicitous marketing: the "sucker list." Rosters of easy marks, compiled by and circulated among the purveyors of consumer fraud and [End Page 700] get-rich-quick schemes, have been around for at least a century and a half, and have become a mainstay of commercial duplicity in the United States. The emergence and evolution of...

“The Magnitude of Me”: Reggie Jackson, Baseball, and the Seventies

Abstract During the 1970s, Reggie Jackson, arguably the most polarizing black baseball player of his time, became an emblem of the decade. A five-time World Series champion with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees, he publicly challenged white owners, managers, teammates, and reporters. For Jackson, challenging white authority meant reclaiming his manhood. While white critics claimed that he was too flamboyant and too outspoken, black fans and writers complained that he was self-absorbed, unwilling to speak out for any cause other than his own. Embracing the politics of self, Jackson emerged as a symbol of excessive individualism during a growing cultural shift toward personal fulfillment. Although Jackson was one of the most prominent athletes of the seventies, historians have neglected to explain his larger cultural significance. His story, however, not only reveals how black athletes shaped the idea of the “Me Decade” but also how they transformed American sports through participation, protest, and personalized peformance. Jackson was at the forefront of a new generation of black athletes: the first class of baseball’s fee agents, players who were wealthier, more mobile, and more independent. Among the first black athletes who crossed over as mainstream corporate spokesmen, he became baseball’s greatest media star, recognized as much for his personality as for his athletic accomplishments. The age of Jackson marked a turning point in American sports history, one where black athletes embraced new freedoms, defied authority, and expressed their own individual style.

Long-Distance Love Affair, or How to Root for a Team That's Three Thousand Miles Away

Long-Distance Love Affair, or How to Root for a Team That's Three Thousand Miles Away Paul Hensler (bio) As a lifelong Connectican whose first baseball idol was Mickey Mantle, I was possessed of a fandom that wandered from the New York Yankees in early 1967, to Boston later that year when the Red Sox survived a four-team scramble to win the American League pennant—and almost capture the World Series—and then back to New York in 1969 when the Mets stunned the Baltimore Orioles in the fall classic. With three major league franchises in such close proximity to my hometown, there is a natural inclination for others to assume that one of them is my team of choice. However, when a baseball conversation prompts the question of which club I root for—a group currently titled the Los Angeles Angels—that answer elicits a follow-up query. "Oh, you're from California?" My reply can only be sufficient by way of what follows. After divulging that I've lived in Connecticut my entire life, I explain a number of factors that entered into my confounding selection that occurred in 1970, give or take a year. In the late 1960s, the California Angels—and we'll revisit that name in a bit—were a mediocre team, but their shortstop, Jim Fregosi, was one of the better players at his position, and his keystone partner, Bobby Knoop, wasn't too shabby either. The supporting cast, however, was only fair to middling, so the Angels were destined to be a .500 team. Yet they displayed one sartorial dash that was unique: an actual halo of white that was stitched into the caps they wore. The navy panels of the hats were augmented by a bright red bill, and the white interlocking "CA" at the front made this headgear pretty classy looking, so classy, in fact, that I commandeered a copy of The Sporting News, and got Mom write a check to accompany the coupon [End Page 99] to be sent to a sporting goods dealer—in Chicago, if memory serves—for an Angels cap. After the passage of requisite time, a shoebox-sized carton arrived in the mail, and my excitement was at a level akin to Christmas morning. I couldn't wait to open the package and proudly outfit my pate with my halo-crested cap. Imagine my reaction when I uncrated the contents and discovered that the much-awaited item, while remaining faithful to the color scheme, featured two crushing revisions. Missing was the "CA," its space now occupied by an elongated lower-case "a," but worst of all was the absence of the cherished halo once adorning the top. Well, the halo wasn't completely gone, but it had become miniaturized and placed at a jaunty angle as if to be hanging from the top left of the new "a." Crestfallen but still loyal, I soon after broke out a little bottle of white Testor's model paint and did my own retro-update of the original halo around the top, the new reality and authenticity be damned. With the cap now conforming to my stilted standard, it was time to embark on the business of root, root, rooting for my home team, though located on the other side of the country. In an era predating the arrival of the internet, this posed a serious challenge to finding out the scores of many games, especially those played at night in Anaheim. Our most important local newspaper printed morning and afternoon editions, but you could always count on the composite posting of results to look like this, from May 14, 1976: Boston 2, Milwaukee 1 Baltimore 6, New York 2 Cleveland 6, Detroit 3 Kansas City 7, Chicago 1 Minnesota at California, late Texas at Oakland, late If the game—any game, for that matter—wasn't completed by 11:00 p.m., press time for the morning paper, that result would receive the "late" designation, and if you could hold out for the afternoon newspaper, at least you had the opportunity to catch up on the score. But unless the Yankees or Red Sox were involved...

Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians ed. by Joseph Wancho

Reviewed by: Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians ed. by Joseph Wancho Russ Crawford Joseph Wancho, ed., Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. 352 pp. $26.95. From the American League’s leading hitter Bobby Avila to reserve outfielder Wally Westlake, Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians provides biographies of the personnel who made the 1954 season a memorable one for the Indians. Few, other than hard core baseball fans or Indians devotees, might remember that Cleveland finished the season with 111 wins, an American League record that stood until the New York Yankees won 114 in 1998. However, nearly everyone who has ever heard of baseball is familiar with “The Catch” that Willie Mays of the New York Giants made on a long fly ball by Vic Wertz in the first game of the World Series. Many credit Mays’ incredible feat with changing the nature of the series that year, leading to a Giant upset sweep of the Cleveland team that featured league leaders in home runs, batting average, and RBIs. As the title suggests, the Indians pitching was no less stellar, with a staff that included two twenty-game winners, and another who won nineteen while leading the league in ERA. Long before the Save became an official statistic, their bullpen featured two accomplished closers. The 1954 Indians seemingly had it all, but came away without a single win in the series, finishing second to yet another New York team. The volume is the latest edition of the University of Nebraska Press’s Memorable Teams in Baseball History series, and the authors of the sixty-two entries in the collection, who are members of the Society of American [End Page 74] Baseball Research, have done a creditable job of providing biographies of the men who made the 1954 Indians memorable. While the biographical essays vary in length and quality, for the most part this work succeeds in its goal of telling the story of the men who accomplished so much. These are not, however, hard-hitting, tear-down-the-clubhouse-door biographies. They largely emphasize the positive, celebrating the lives and accomplishments of their subjects. Some are rigorously cited, while others have few notes. What makes Pitching to the Pennant a pleasant and interesting read are the stories. Many are well known, such as the circumstances surrounding May’s miraculous catch. There have been thousands of words written, spoken, and recorded concerning that single, albeit spectacular play. Lesser known but still compelling stories told or retold in the work include the history of Mickey Grasso, the only one of eight World War II POWs to play in a World Series. Grasso, a reserve catcher, was captured by the Germans in North Africa in 1943, and spent more than two years in captivity before escaping near the end of the war. His interactions with his German captors reportedly left him with a strong dislike for authority, which led to his being ejected from twenty-three games while playing for the minor league Seattle Rainiers in 1949. Once he was even allegedly tossed because the umpire could tell what the catcher was thinking (236). As the first African American in the American League, Larry Doby faced the same challenges as Jackie Robinson, but received much less attention for being a pioneer. His story is told here, but also lost in the momentous story of MLB’s integration is that other leagues had their own integration stories. Dave Hoskins, who pitched sparingly for the Indians in 1954, was the first African American to play in the AA Texas League. No movies have chronicled his life, and academic treatments of his career do not fill the shelves. Nevertheless, the experiences he had playing for the 1952 Dallas Eagles and earlier at Grand Rapids and Dayton of the Class A Central League were as extreme as anything Robinson or Roby faced. There are numerous other amusing, appalling, or instructive anecdotes that fill the pages of the work. We are reminded, for instance, that Hall of Fame pitcher Hal Newhouser had difficulty controlling his temper. After being pulled from one game, he...

Mantle—The Best There Ever Was by Tony Castro

Reviewed by: Mantle—The Best There Ever Was by Tony Castro Rob Sheinkopf Tony Castro. Mantle—The Best There Ever Was. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 239 pp. Cloth, $24.95. Since 1951 when Mickey Mantle came into the American consciousness, hundreds of books have been written detailing virtually every aspect of his life. Even more have been published since his death in August 1995, including three by Tony Castro. So much has been written about Mantle's legendary New York Yankees Hall of Fame career and his relationship with teammates Joe DiMaggio, Billy Martin, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford. We've heard countless stories about his humble beginnings, about his relationship with his father, Mutt, and the influence he had on Mickey's development, his notorious womanizing and extra-marital affairs, his bout with alcoholism and his lewd behavior, his rehabilitation and recovery, and his heroic final chapter when he took responsibility for his failures in life and finally became the role model people wanted him to be as a ballplayer. Tony Castro's Mantle—The Best There Ever Was tells us so much of what we already know, which should not be surprising since Mickey Mantle has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century. So, what could possibly be new about Mickey Mantle? Castro introduces hundreds of interviews with former teammates, friends and family, and some newly released interviews from [End Page 130] Mickey's widow, Merlyn Mantle, that reveal an even more troubled, flawed character than we might wish to remember. The author's promise to Merlyn that he wouldn't publish their conversations until after her death (at age seventy-seven from Alzheimer's Disease), delayed our understanding of her reasons for staying in a marriage that seems to have obviously ended many years before. Revealing the interviews with Mickey's wife of forty-four years and providing first-hand accounts of conversations with his long-time friend, Mickey Mantle, Castro provides some new perspectives on a lifetime that has been dissected, analyzed, and studied to death for nearly seventy years. The many interviews and the author's accounts of personal conversations with Mickey Mantle gives readers new details and a fresh perspective of his well-documented, turbulent personal life. We learned that Mickey was sexually abused as a child by his half-sister, Anna Bea, and that he wet his bed until he was sixteen years old. And while we knew of his father's strict parenting and coaching, we learned troubling details about Lovell, his mother, and her dark side, even meanness toward her grandchildren. In fact, "Merlyn Mantle would go to her grave convinced that Mutt's overbearing fathering unchecked by Lovell's own detached manner left Mickey emotionally and psychologically traumatized, and unable to turn even to his loved ones for help" (44). Merlyn attributed Mickey's "affairs, his one-night stands, the crude and vulgar language he used around women when he drank" to the molestation from Anna Bea, a traumatic scarring that lasted him a lifetime (45). While engaged to Merlyn Johnson when he joined the Yankees in 1951, Mickey met the love of his life, Holly Brooke, a young divorced mother from New Jersey, with whom he would carry on a love affair even after his marriage to Merlyn later that year and throughout his baseball career. Many biographers over the years tried to interview Holly but were unable to locate her, and some concluded that she was no longer living. But Castro was finally able to find Holly through one of her nephews, and they established a decade-long friendship until her death in 2018 at age ninety-four. The conversations with Holly were invaluable in providing "an important missing link to Mantle from his rookie year," according to Castro (229). Holly apparently "was blessed with an incredible memory and a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of New York in that golden age," and gave many new insights, including her memories and insights into Mantle's "friendship" with Joe DiMaggio. Her recollections of Mantle and DiMaggio's relationship are corroborated by Merlyn and by Greer Johnson, Mickey's companion for the final decade of his life, as well...