Dolich, Andy, and Newhouse, Dave. Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust and a Sports Town’s Fight for Survival. Chicago: Triumph Books. 2023. Pp. 256. No index or chapter notes. $28 (hardcover). Reviewed by Richard A. Macales “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared…
By Scott Myers With the recent announcement (December 16, 2020) by MLB that it will now recognize the Negro Leagues for the period of 1920-1948 as ‘Major League’, it is apparent that MLB should be thoroughly embarrassed for taking so long to do so. Thousands of MLB careers were denied to worthy African American and…
By Andrew McGregor Major League Baseball doesn’t care. If you have been paying attention to the sport over the last several months, it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion. Amidst the uproar and panic of the global COVID-19 pandemic and a summer of intense social unrest and protests against systemic inequality and police brutality,…
Peterson, Todd, ed. The Negro Leagues were Major Leagues: Historians Reappraise Black Baseball. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing Company, 2020. Reviewed by Leslie Heaphy Todd Peterson has brought together an impressive array of authors to try to answer a long-debated question regarding the Negro Leagues. Historians, researchers, and the general fans have differing views of the…
Sarantakes, Nicholas Evans. Fan in Chief: Richard Nixon and American Sports, 1969-1974. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2019. ix+349. Appendix, notes, timeline, bibliographical essay, sources, and index. Reviewed by Russ Crawford Nicholas Evans Sarantakes has written a comprehensive analysis of President Richard M. Nixon’s interaction with the sporting world in Fan in Chief. It is…
Mitchell, Lincoln A. Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2018. 8 b/w photographs, 10 tables, acknowledgements, chapter notes, index. Pp. 264. $39.95 softcover. Reviewed by Michael T. Wood Lincoln A. Mitchell, a political science faculty member and research scholar at Columbia…
Burgess, Granville Wyche. The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe: A Novel. New York, NY: Chickadee Prince Books, 2019. Pp. 252. $12.99 trade paperback. Reviewed by Gavin J. Woltjer This fall will mark the 100-year anniversary of the notorious Black Sox scandal, arguably the worst scandal in the history of US professional sports. Fallout from the…
Alou, Felipe, and Peter Kerasotis. Alou: My Baseball Journey. Forward by Pedro Martinez. Pp 336, 35 photographs, 1 illustration, and 1 index. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. $29.95 hardcover. A few years ago, a popular brand of beer (associated with one of the Major League clubs) ran a commercial that demonstrated the dramatic demographic…
Endsley, Brian M. Koufax Throws a Curve: The Los Angeles Dodgers at the End of an Era, 1964-66. Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company, 2018. Appendix of Dodger and Koufax data, epilogue, notes, index. $35.00 paperback. Reviewed by Murry Nelson Koufax Throws a Curve: The Los Angeles Dodgers at the End of an Era is…
By Seth S. Tannenbaum A new Major League Baseball season is about to get underway and, as it has for years, the game continues to struggle to pull in younger fans. Since 2006, the average age of baseball fans has gone up from 52 to 57. To counter this and hopefully attract new fans, this season…
Sport in American History 