A Galaxy of Stars best describes Andrew “Rube” Foster’s 1910 Chicago Leland Giants. In their only season together, this combination of players played their way into the heart and soul of a nation divided. They are proof positive that the National and American Leagues did not corner the market on athletic talent. Foster's unit began the season with a thirty-two and one record and ended with thirty-one consecutive victories. They scored nearly 1,000 runs and finished the season with a 124-7-1 record. Their win total is elevated to 138-11-2 when Cuban Winter League games are added. They played 64 games in the Chicago portion of their schedule. These games are equivalent to a home schedule for National and American League teams. Foster's Giants finished with a landmark 57-6-1 record for games played in Chicago. That Foster, John Henry Lloyd, and John "Pete" Hill, three members of the 1910 Leland Giants, are enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is worthy of closer observation. And yet, Bruce Petway, Frank Wickware, and Grant "Home Run" Johnson should be there, too. Thus, Phil Dixon's American Baseball Chronicles, Volume II, Great Teams, enters the illustrious conversation. The Leland Giants story is uniquely told here in a day-to-day account of every exciting win and every memorable thrill. The comparative scores and related histories are a resourceful and entertaining aid for further analysis of the participation of African-American athletes in baseball as best represented by one legendary team in a single championship season.

The "Greatest Baseball team of all-time" easily describes the 1931 Homestead Grays. They remain a team never to be forgotten—a team that rates with the greatest teams in all of baseball history. Organized in 1910, baseball’s Homestead Grays of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—an exclusively African-American team—held claim to a regional championship and also a legitimate claim to baseball’s World Championship. The Grays’ well-known leader was Hall of Famer Cumberland “Cum” Posey. His 1931 Grays featured among others; Hall of Fame third baseman Jud Wilson, Hall of Fame infielder Oscar Charleston, a Hall of Fame catcher in Josh Gibson and two Hall of Fame pitchers in Willie Foster and Joseph “Smokey Joe” Williams—a total of five legendary players. Paced by young Josh Gibson, age 18 and the most powerful home run hitter in baseball, Posey’s 1931 Homestead Grays finished with a magnificent 143-29-2 record. This is their story told here for the first time. Included within the text are written accounts for every game from the Homestead Grays’ entire 1931 schedule of nearly 175 contest, with scores, attendance figures and player biographies. The work includes score and locations on more than 300 additional games played by the Kansas City Monarchs, Hilldale, Baltimore’s Black Sox, the Cuban House of David, New York’s Harlem Stars and other African-American teams in operation during that same 1931 season. The comparative scores and their related histories are a resourceful and entertaining aid for further analysis and assessment on the participation of African-American athletes in baseball as best represented from the perspective of a single championship season.

From the best-selling author of the Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, 1867-1955 comes the definitive biography on the career of an outstanding baseball pitcher, manager, and President of the Negro National League. Andrew "Rube" Foster is in a class all to himself as an architect of race relations and social progress in American baseball. His most lasting legacy was the founding of the Negro National League in 1920, which provided opportunities for an entire generation of African-American athletes. Although there were few opportunities when he was in his youth, Foster, the son of a former slave, sought success on baseball fields throughout the South with the Waco Yellow Jackets. Leaving Texas in 1902, he arrived in Chicago where two African-American men, Frank C. Leland and William S. Peters, had already achieved some of what Foster had dreamed of doing himself. They were operating their own teams, hiring talented players and turning a profit on their labor. Labeled as aloof and ineffective as a pitcher, Foster left Chicago after only one season with the Chicago Union Giants. Yet believing in himself, Foster traveled East to where Grant "Home Run" Johnson was training his Cuban X Giants team, and sought employment. In his only season with the Cuban X Giants Foster's pitching led them to the World's Championship. Foster was lured to the Philadelphia Giants in 1904, a team under the leadership of Sol White, and Foster promptly pitched them to their first World's Championship. Philadelphia's Championship run was repeated in 1905 and 1906. Having matured as a player under Johnson's and White's guidance, Foster sought to manage a team of his own in 1907. Although revered as a stern taskmaster, Foster had great charisma with players and fans. In 1907 he returned to Chicago, this time as manager of Leland's team, the Chicago Leland Giants. Arriving with Foster were players from the Brooklyn Royal Giants, Philadelphia's Giants, and the Cuban X Giants. As a result, he fired all of Leland's former players and replaced them with men that had played in the East. Foster's new team dominated baseball's freedom fields as no African-American team had before them. In 1909, the Foster-led Leland Giants captured the City League pennant and then battled the National League's Chicago Cubs for City Championship honors. The next year, in 1910, Foster fielded his best team ever. His team finished with just six games lost. Having won many victories, Chicago's Leland Giants symbolized economic equality, inspired social change, and provoked African-American pride. Crowds filled the parks when and wherever Foster and his team appeared. Charles Comiskey and members of the Chicago White Sox, the World's Champion Chicago Cubs, John McGraw and Connie Mack sought to see the legendary Andrew "Rube" Foster in action. Based on twenty years of research, Andrew "Rube" Foster: A Harvest on Freedom's Fields is an inspiring story of an enduring figure and the many individuals who inspired his success on baseball fields all over America.

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.

Philadelphia's African-American Giants were organized in 1902 by Harry A. Smith and H. Walter Schlichter. Smith, a former baseball player and writer for the Philadelphia Tribune, had conceived the idea of organizing a team and approached Schlichter, the sports editor of the Philadelphia Evening Item, for financial backing. Veteran player/manager Solomon 'Sol' White was hired as captain of the newly organized Giants and immediately placed in charge of player recruitment. By continually fazing out the old ballplayers and introducing new ones, Smith, Schlichter and White built the Philadelphia Giants into one of the strongest baseball teams in the country. Their record of games won was unparalleled. In 1904 this same Philadelphia Giants team defeated the Cuban X Giants to claim their first Worlds Championship, a title that they held for many years. As an independent organization, one that was totally seperated from National and American League connections, the Philadelphia Giants operated with the utmost of integrity and sportsmanship from 1902-1910. In honor of the 1905 Philadelphia Giants' contribution to our American pastime, Dixon's American Baseball chronicles has compiled statistics and game notes from the entire championship season of 1905. This series, the first of its kind, is a unique offering of an in-depth series of publications about the greatest baseball teams in African-American sports history. What makes this work unique is it's easy to read format and depth of information. Included within the book are written accounts for every game from the Philadelphia Giants' entire 1905 schedule of nearly 158 contest, with scores, attendance figures and other seldom revealed information. The work includes aditional information on more than 300 additional games played by the Cuban X Giants, Chicago Leland Giants, Brooklyn Royal Giants and other African-American teams in operation during that same 1905 season, as well as additional historic information as it related to the National and American baseball Leagues. The comparative scores and their related histories are a resourceful and entertaining aid for further analysis and assessment on the participation of African-American athletes in baseball as best represented from the perspective of a single Championship season.

This book follows Dizzy and Daffy Dean's All-Stars as they barnstormed across the country in 1934, taking the field against the greatest teams in the Negro Leagues. It shows the glory of the games as well as the disingenuous journalistic tactics that proliferated during the tour with an introspective look at its impact on race relations. In 1934, brothers Dizzy and Daffy Dean were stars of Major League Baseball's regular season and World Series. Following their St. Louis Cardinals' victory over the Detroit Tigers in Game Seven, Dizzy and Daffy went on a fourteen game barnstorming tour against the best African-American baseball players in the country. The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America's National Pastime examines for the first time the full barnstorming series in its original and uncensored splendor. Phil S. Dixon profiles not only the men who were part of the Deans' All-Star teams but also the men who played against them, including some of baseball's most monumental African-American players. Dixon highlights how the contributions during the tour of Negro League stars such as Satchel Paige, Chet Brewer, Charlie Beverly, and Andy Cooper were glossed over by sports writers of the day and grants them their rightful due in this significant slice of sports history. The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour gives careful consideration to the social implications of the tour and the media's biased coverage of the games, providing a unique window for viewing racism in American sports history. It is more than a baseball story--it is an American story.

Traces the history of the Negro leagues, profiling star athletes and highlighting the challenges they and their teams faced until the desegration of professional baseball in the late 1940s.

The summer of 1938 was a pivotal year for baseball and American history. In that same year, John Jordon "Buck" O'Neil, was a rookie first baseman playing his first season in the Negro American League. Born in Carrabelle, Florida, raised in Sarasota and nicknamed Buck, it had taken five years and five different teams before the Kansas City, Monarchs finally signed O'Neil to a contract. Before he could get the starting assignment, though, O'Neil had to dethrone one of the Negro Leagues' hardest hitting first basemen, Eldridge Mayweather. In 1938, a time when African-American hall of fame ballplayers worth millions could be purchased for pennies on the dollar, times were hard and the baseball was tough. Kansas City's Monarchs were a blend of youth and maturity, and one of the best teams in the Negro American League. Oddly, Kansas City, in spite of winning records against every team in the Negro American League, failed to win the first-half or second-half pennant. For the first time ever John "Buck" O'Neil, Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe and James "Gabby" Kemp and many others are united together to speak on this celebrated season. With interviews from Monarchs' players Willard "Sonny" Brown, Newt Allen and Byron "Mex" Johnson and many others readers are taken on a road trip around America. Along the way readers, just as the team did in 1938, come in contact with segregation and racism as the book helps everyone to relive the glory days of the Negro Baseball Leagues. Illustrated with over forty historic photographs, John "Buck" O'Neil, the rookie, the man, the lagacy 1938 is a welcome addition to every baseball fans reading list.

From the palace hotels of the elite to cheap lodging houses, residential hotels have been an element of American urban life for nearly two hundred years. Since 1870, however, they have been the target of an official war led by people whose concept of home does not include the hotel. Do these residences constitute an essential housing resource, or are they, as charged, a public nuisance? Living Downtown, the first comprehensive social and cultural history of life in American residential hotels, adds a much-needed historical perspective to this ongoing debate. Creatively combining evidence from biographies, buildings and urban neighborhoods, workplace records, and housing policies, Paul Groth provides a definitive analysis of life in four price-differentiated types of downtown residence. He demonstrates that these hotels have played a valuable socioeconomic role as home to both long-term residents and temporary laborers. Also, the convenience of hotels has made them the residence of choice for a surprising number of Americans, from hobo author Boxcar Bertha to Calvin Coolidge. Groth examines the social and cultural objections to hotel households and the increasing efforts to eliminate them, which have led to the seemingly irrational destruction of millions of such housing units since 1960. He argues convincingly that these efforts have been a leading contributor to urban homelessness. This highly original and timely work aims to expand the concept of the American home and to recast accepted notions about the relationships among urban life, architecture, and the public management of residential environments.