"This first complete history provides an overview of the league's early years, detailed summaries for the official seasons of 1920 through 1947 and accounts of the exciting pennant races between the Negro league teams and the white professional teams. Appendices provide extensive statistical information."--BOOK JACKET.

Until 1947, professional ball players were paid only from opening day to season's end. Even during the season, a lot of their expenses came out of their own pockets. Even the best-paid players had trouble making ends meet. One answer to their money woes was barnstorming--tours out of season. Cities lacking their own major league teams were happy to host big-league players for such events, as well as for special exhibition games whose proceeds sometimes went to local charities. Here is a history of barnstorming and exhibition games from 1901 (when both of the two current major leagues began operating) through 1962 (when a team led by Willie Mays was unsuccessful in its attempt at a tour, signaling an end to true barnstorming). Decade by decade, it covers the teams, the games, and the players for a detailed look at how barnstorming and exhibition brought big-league baseball to the backyard ballparks of America.

Since 1971, 35 Negro League baseball players and executives have been admitted to the Hall of Fame. The Negro League Hall of Fame admissions process, which has now been conducted in four phases over a 50-year period, can be characterized as idiosyncratic at best. Drawing on baseball analytics and surveys of both Negro League historians and veterans, this book presents an historical overview of NLHOF voting, with an evaluation of whether the 35 NL players selected were the best choices. Using modern metrics such as Wins Above Replacement (WAR), 24 additional Negro Leaguers are identified who have Hall of Fame qualifications. Brief biographies are included for HOF-quality players and executives who have been passed over, along with reasons why they may have been excluded. A proposal is set forth for a consistent and orderly HOF voting process for the Negro Leagues.

Poems.

Negro League ballplayers, earning paychecks comparable to those of blue-collar workers, needed an off-season source of income to make ends meet. Many of them found the answer in baseball, by joining racially integrated barnstorming teams that toured the country after the regular season ended, or by playing in the organized winter leagues that operated in Florida, California, and several Caribbean and Central and South American countries. This history recounts the experiences of American black ballplayers outside of the Negro Leagues--often in places where a lack of prejudice contrasted sharply with conditions at home. Tracing the development of the game in each location and the unique character of each winter league, it details the contributions of the Negro League players and collects their statistics in each of the winter leagues.

Baseball has joined America and Japan, even in times of strife, for over 150 years. After the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu explains, baseball was introduced there by American employees of the Japanese government tasked with bringing Western knowledge and technology to the country, and Japanese students in the United States soon became avid players. In the early twentieth century, visiting Japanese warships fielded teams that played against American teams, and a Negro League team arranged tours to Japan. By the 1930s, professional baseball was organized in Japan where it continued to be played during and after World War II; it was even played in Japanese American internment camps in the United States during the war. From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.

While the story of the Negro Leagues has been well documented, few baseball fans know about the Japanese American Nisei Leagues, or of their most influential figure, Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968). A talented player who excelled at all nine positions, Zenimura was also a respected manager and would become the Japanese American community's baseball ambassador. He worked tirelessly to promote the game at home and abroad, leading goodwill trips to Asia, helping to negotiate tours of Japan by Negro League All-Stars and Babe Ruth, and establishing a 32-team league behind the barbed wire of Arizona's Gila River Internment Camp during World War II. This first biography of the "Father of Japanese-American Baseball" delivers a thorough and fascinating account of Zenimura's life.

One of major league baseball's first Native American stars, John Tortes "Chief" Meyers (1880-1971) was the hard-hitting, award-winning catcher for John McGraw's New York Giants from 1908 to 1915 and later for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He appeared in four World Series and remains heralded for his role as the trusted battery mate of legendary pitcher Christy Mathewson. Unlike other Native American players who eschewed their tribal identities to escape prejudice, Meyers--a member of the Santa Rosa Band of the Cahuilla Tribe of California--remained proud of his heritage and became a tribal leader after his major league career. This first full biography explores John Tortes Meyers's Cahuilla roots and early life, his year at Dartmouth College, his outstanding baseball career, his life after baseball, and his remarkable legacy.

"This lavishly illustrated narrative of Walter Johnson's life is the definitive work on the subject and is likely to remain so."-Lawrence S. Ritter, Oldtyme Baseball News. "Henry Thomas's biography of Walter Johnson is carefully researched, thoroughly documented, and, best of all, a pleasure to read."-Spitball. "Does justice to Johnson's extraordinary on-field accomplishments, and it also emphasizes his decency, humility, and self-effacing humor."-Booklist. "Belongs in the very top ranks of sports biographies."-Washington Times. "One of the most comprehensive biographies ever written about an athlete. Incredibly detailed, filled with fascinating stories about arguably the greatest pitcher of all time."-Tim Kurkjian, senior writer for Sports Illustrated. "Delights the soul."-Sports Collectors Digest. Henry W. Thomas, the grandson of Walter Johnson, lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is currently editing, for audio release, the interviews taped by Lawrence Ritter for his classic The Glory of Their Times. Shirley Povich is in his seventy-fifth year as an award-winning sportswriter for the Washington Post.

Many of the great ballplayers of the Negro League have been forgotten simply because baseball's Hall of Fame would not recognize black players until Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige made their way into the Hall of Fame. For this book, more than 50 former Negro League players and baseball historians were asked to vote for players who they believe should have been included in the Hall of Fame, and to select an All-Time Negro League All-Star Team. In addition to presenting and discussing their choices, the book profiles the lives and careers of the players selected. Appendices include rosters of the players and historians who voted.