Wash. U's Gerald Early on Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America

TheLearningCurve_GeraldEarly
Alisha Searcy: [00:00:00] Hey, and welcome to the Learning Curve podcast. I’m your co-host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and joined by our other co-host, Dr. Albert Cheng. Hey, Albert. How’s it going?
Albert Cheng: Hey, going all right, Alisha. Hope you’re doing well today, too.
Alisha Searcy: I am doing well, thanks. I’m actually in the Georgia Mountains today, so it’s a beautiful site out here and looking forward to an exciting and fun show today.
Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. Nice bit of scenery to do a show, huh?
Alisha Searcy: Exactly. Exactly. And itching to get outside after this. I’m going to play golf today with some friends, so that should be fun.
Albert Cheng: Great.
Alisha Searcy: Yes. Well, let’s jump in. We’ve got, of course, some interesting stories for the [00:01:00] week. Would you like to go first?
Albert Cheng: Yeah, sure. You know, I, I wanna give my, uh, a shout out to my colleague Patrick Wolf.
He’s got a thought provoking piece at Education Next entitled, imagine There’s No Politics or Review of the Northern Report. And it’s a fascinating article. You know, it’s, it’s actually about IES, the Institute for Educational Sciences, you know, the arm in the US department of that. That’s done a lot of the data collection for, golly, I think we’re, you know, my history escapes me, but this is on the order of, use the word, you know, centuries.
But as we talk about the role of the US Department of Ed and role of federal government education, you know, this piece is about, the Institute of Education Sciences in particular. And you know, Pat has a, a, an interesting vantage point, I should say, because he’s kind of been there for several decades and seen this institute go through a lot of political change.
It’s aged over time and he [00:02:00] is had a seat to see all this, unlike many of us, and he is giving a lot of thought to, Hey, where might this go? As we think about and kind of have our conversations about what’s the role of the fads, where is data collection, what might they do to make research more accessible, more readily applicable?
He’s got ideas now. He’s not entirely optimistic as well, I should say, but I, I think these are worthwhile conversations to have. These are tough conversations as we kind of think through mm-hmm, through this. So I appreciate him kind of dipping his toe into this and getting us started perhaps on thinking what we might do.
Alisha Searcy: Yeah, I think you’re right. You make a lot of good points and I’ll just say that, and I think you said it very nicely that we’ve seen a lot of iterations. It’s gone through some changes, you know, and I will add that in this current environment, it’s gone through a lot in terms of politics, but I think if you always look for opportunities where there are challenges, here’s an opportunity to maybe right size some of the things [00:03:00] you know, get more modernized, if you will, about the kinds of research that we’re doing. But we know that we need the institute. So I appreciate this article and this work and this research.
Albert Cheng: Yeah, thanks. I believe in institutions, you know, we need to build these kinds of things because these are the things that, look, you and I aren’t gonna be here in several decades, you know, sad to say.
Alisha Searcy: Yeah.
Albert Cheng: Uh, but you know, we need these kinds of institutions to kind of carry on the work across generations.
Alisha Searcy: Exactly. Exactly. And we need to stay. Well, thank you for that. So, speaking of, I think history and research-based practices, I wanted to talk about an article that I came across from The Atlantic. It actually came up on my Facebook page, which was very interesting, and it’s written by Rachel Cantor, who I think a lot of people probably know from.
Her work in Mississippi, and if not, she’s over, I think K 12 education at the Progressive Policy Institute, and she wrote a piece called States Are Learning the Wrong Lesson from the [00:04:00] Mississippi Miracle. A phonics-based curriculum is only one part of how Mississippi went from worse to first in education.
The other part is much harder to pull off. And so I, of course, was interested in this article because we’re all talking about the science of reading, and certainly in the policy work that we do at Center for Strong Public Schools, were very passionate about making sure that kids were able to read, particularly by the end of third grade, read proficiently.
Albert, what was interesting to me in this piece, and I would encourage everybody to take a look at it, she talks about the fact that number one, this whole thing about Mississippi Miracle is not the case, right? There was nothing miraculous about the work that they’ve been doing, and she had been leading work in Mississippi for 17 years, and so it kind of speaks to just how long they’ve been at this and how many people have been involved in this process.
They went from 49th to ninth, and just depending on how you calculate the numbers, she’d say that they’ve become number one. And so she talks about how this really [00:05:00] started during the days of No Child Left Behind, which again, things that I didn’t really realize. ’cause we think Carrie Wright was a state superintendent.
She had this All Star team, which she did, all of a sudden, you know, they instituted this miracle and boom, here we go. Well, rachel talks about the fact that this started 17, probably 20 years ago or more, starting with No Child Left Behind. They instituted a grading system that a whole A through F piece that we hear a lot about in different states.
They had things like more compliance. Instead of having just compliance from the Department of Education, they were much more engaged. And at the end of the day, I think all of this could be couched as a lot more accountability. She talks about how many states, and she includes Georgia in that. We started this a couple of years ago and still haven’t quite gotten it right because we’ve done things like allow for districts to use their own curriculum and assessment.
When it comes to the science of reading, and they could choose between, I forget what the number was at the time. [00:06:00] Probably 20 something different choices they had. And when you know what’s right and you know what works, you don’t give that many choices. You just say, Hey, this is what we’re going to use.
She talks about California, a number of states, so you end this piece by saying this, and I just wanna read this. She says, my fear is that peer implementation, and above all, a failure to take accountability seriously, will end up discrediting good ideas if these legislative reforms don’t work. Some states might conclude that the science of reading is ineffective and move on to the next education policy fad for exactly this reason.
The silent compact has emerged in Mississippi lately to refrain from calling What happened? A miracle, the word diminishes the very real human effort required to change education for the children of our state. So, you know, continues on and she says Mississippi took every step. No matter how exhausting to fix education, other states will have to do the same.
And so I just think it’s a reminder, Albert, that sometimes we do get ahold of fas and we’ve been around long enough to see some of them come through. [00:07:00] I think implementation is important and we can never lose sight of accountability. It’s not the most exciting or sexy thing to talk about, but I think it’s one of the most critical, if we really wanna see transformation in our public education system, so great article.
Albert Cheng: Well, thanks for sharing that, Alisha. Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly a lot to think about and process and and reflect on as we kinda look to Mississippi these days and obviously wish the work will be sustained and continued. I mean, look, with education’s prone to fad is you always worry about.
Whether, uh, these gains you see at a certain time get sustained. And so let’s hope for that and let’s hope other states can kind of figure it out. And, and to your point too, Alisha, you know, states are gonna need to have some leadership and kind of figure out how, how it’s gonna work in their context too.
So appreciate the bigger picture questions. I think I, I might call that as we try to crack this implementation nut here. That’s always the perennial challenge, I guess.
Alisha Searcy: Exactly. Very true. Very true. Well. [00:08:00] Looking forward to our show today, Albert. We have with us Gerald Early, who is the Merle Cling professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St.
Louis, an author of Play Harder, the Triumph of Black Baseball in America. So make sure you all stick around and when we get back, we’ll hear from Gerald early.
Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of several books, including The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture (1994), for which he won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; This is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s(2003); [00:09:00] One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture (2004); A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports (Alain Locke Lecture Series) (2011); and more recently with the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America (2025). He is also the editor of numerous volumes, including Miles Davis and American Culture (2001); The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader (2001); Best African American Fiction (2009 and 2010); and Best African American Essays (2009 and 2010). He served as a consultant on Ken Burns’s documentary films on baseball, jazz, Jack Johnson, World War II, and the Roosevelts. Early earned his B.A. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and Ph.D. English from Cornell University.
Would you share with us some of your background, your formative educational experiences, and maybe a brief overview of play Harder?
Gerald Early: Certainly, I grew up in Philadelphia and I went [00:10:00] to school at the University of Pennsylvania, and then I went to school at Cornell University. I’ve been at Washington University in St. Louis for 44 years, I’ve been there since 1982. I’ve always had a longstanding interest in sports. I’ve written about it. I’ve written a lot about boxing. I think a lot of people know me more for writing about boxing than baseball, but in any case, Play Harder was a project that I did in partnership with the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
The idea of the book was to tell the story of black baseball in the United States. And at the same time, try to tell a somewhat larger story about black people, black Americans, principally their relationship to the game of baseball.
Alisha Searcy: Thank you. So this was one of our favorite quotes as we were preparing to talk to you.
You said, quote, there are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now [00:11:00] when they study the civilization, the constitution, jazz, music, and baseball end quote. You said that on on a Ken Burns documentary. Could you tell us about this quote and share what it’s been like working on so many high profile Ken Burns productions
Gerald Early: That quote was Burns was interviewing me for the baseball documentary he did back in the early nineties. I was a late addition to the film. I had been a consultant and after a certain point he wanted another black person talking in the film other than Buck O’Neal. So he asked me if I would do it. I was very pretty reluctant to do it, but I did it.
And so when you’re being interviewed like that, you start saying things and that was just something that kind of came up spontaneously. The quote has been used a lot, I think, I don’t know, I don’t even know if I was being quite serious when I said it, but, um, of course I said jazz music ’cause I love jazz music and I, I do think this civilization will be remembered for it.[00:12:00]
And I said baseball because I love baseball. The constitution. I think at the time, the reason why I said that was because I’ve been reading a lot of Frederick Douglass, and Douglass said the greatest, one of the great things about the United States was the Constitution, and that he said the Constitution was this anti-slavery document, which went counter to what a lot of people thought at the time, and it, it broke up with anti-slavery radicals like William Lloyd Garrison over this idea.
And I said, wow, Douglas thought the Constitution was great and this was before the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment for added. I was very impressed with that idea, and I think that was probably why I said the Constitution rather than say the Declaration of Independence.
Alisha Searcy: Oh, very interesting. So quote, the title of this book itself, Play Harder, was a phrase Black players used to motivate themselves when facing adversity.
End quote, you wrote in the introduction of Play Harder. So Play [00:13:00] Harder was an expression of aspiration, determination, willpower, and courage. Would you unpack this quote for us and discuss the process of working with the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the book and its title?
Gerald Early: The title Play Harder. It came from several quotes.
From black players. Most of these quotes come from a book by Jackie Robinson called Baseball has Done It. It was a book about the integration of baseball and it came out in the early 1960s and Robinson interviewed a lot of black players and all of that. Talking about play harder was all about all the struggles that we’re having with playing.
Game playing in the major leagues or playing in the minor leagues and playing with integration. It was all about the response to integration and your deal of integration in the game, and that’s where the expression came from. So it’s pointing to a specific moment. In the history of black people [00:14:00] playing baseball, and I thought it was good because to me, the ordeal of integration is one of the main stories of the book.
It isn’t just about the Negro leagues. People tend to think that if you’re talking about black baseball, but the ordeal of integration to me was very significant story about baseball, and so that’s why I suggested that they use that title and they didn’t have a better title to use. So that title got used.
And to amplify that in the front of the book, they have the quotes from the players using it. Some variation of the, of the expression, play harder. I just thought that it was a very powerful way of encapsulating the experience of black ball players at a certain stage. Of the game in the United States, it satisfied what the publisher wanted.
The publisher wanted something that was short, something that indicated it was a sports book and something that black players actually said and [00:15:00] Clay, harder satisfied all of that.
Alisha Searcy: Yeah, very fitting and very powerful. Thank you for that. During reconstruction during the launch of the Jim Crow era, when local and state laws legalized segregation In the south, you write and play harder.
There were black people in America who loved baseball more than just about anything else. Could you offer us brief highlights of black baseball in America from after the Civil War to the turn of the century?
Gerald Early: Well, black people played baseball for a long time, even before the Civil War. We have recorded instances of black people playing baseball.
Baseball was a popular game in the 19th century and it was considered to be the American game. And black people played the game because they loved the game. They organized teams. One of the earliest and one of the most important black teams was Pythians in Philadelphia. And they was a social club really.
[00:16:00] And Octavius Keto, who ran the club, was also a civil rights activist. He was murdered on the streets of Philadelphia in the early 1870s doing an election, and he was murdered by some white Tufts who didn’t want black people to vote at this particular time. Black people voting was a major, major, major issue in the United States.
It would remain a major issue in the United States. Well into the 20th century, one of the most important forms of oppression that black people experienced in the United States was their right to vote being suppressed or undermined. So the clubs were important ways. The reason why black people were so interested in baseball was because they thought of it as America’s game, and they thought this was a way for us to really belong and announce ourselves as Americans.
Because remember that during the, earlier in 1857, the dress Scott decision declared that black people were not Americans. It declared that black people were not citizens, and that wasn’t cleared up until. The [00:17:00] 14th amendment that actually made black people, citizens of the United States. So the idea of being a citizen was very important to black people because it was precarious.
And so one of the ways of showing your Jewish citizen and showing you belong to the country was to play the game. Black people liked the idea of organizing. Organizing teams, show black people had. Uh, will and determination to organize things, to do things on their own that they could organize, teams that they could play and that they could find spaces to play.
All of that was very important to black people at the time, and also developing spectators, black spectators who would come out and see the game. Also, having the game written up, developing. As black people develop newspapers to have the games written about so that you could develop a fan base. All of that was part of the organizing that was going on among black people in the late 19th century, and it was this great organizing energy that got partly pushed into baseball, and baseball was part of what black people [00:18:00] were trying to do, to use a phrase to uplift the race.
It was all part of uplifting the race.
Alisha Searcy: Hmm. Never knew that. Thank you for sharing. Speaking of organizing in play harder, you say that in 1920, Andrew Rube Foster, a Black American with a grand strategy, was certain that he could organize a baseball league and that black people would support it. Could you tell us about Rube Foster as the father of black baseball?
The major teams, key players, and the fans of the Negro National League?
Gerald Early: Sure that League was formed in 1920 in Kansas City, Missouri at, uh, colored YMCA there, and Rue Foster had been all of his life. He had played baseball. He was a pitcher. He was a very, very good pitcher. His full name was Andrew. Foster, but he was such a good pitcher that people gave him the nickname Rube, after a white baseball player pitcher, who was also very good named Rube Waddell.
So he got the name of Rube [00:19:00] Foster and he, um, also became an owner of a black team, the Chicago American Giants, which he made a powerhouse team during the 19 teens. He was always up the mind that black people would never be able to truly say that they are really making a mark in baseball unless they have a league.
He felt it was important for black people to show they could have a league, they could have a season. They could have a structured thing with baseball and that they could have in effect, organized baseball instead of just having teams that were barnstorming, you could have a league. He felt that it was essential for black people to have a league.
This was all part of uplift the race, the future of the race. The strength of the race was to show you could organize and to show you could have a leak. Black people had tried to have leaks before this, but they lasted maybe a few weeks or a couple of months. He was able to sustain his league for several years, and so that makes him the father of black baseball.
At the time, the [00:20:00] league was started in 1920, as I remember. The other teams were Chicago, American Giants, which was his team group, fosters team, the Kansas City Monarchs, the St. Louis Giants, the Detroit Stars, the Indianapolis ABCs. There was a team in Dayton. It was about eight teams all together, and they were the original teams that started the league.
Now, some teams, as they ran into financial difficulties, kind of dropped out of the league, but the league was a big inspiration. New teams would come in to take their place, and it also inspired the formation of other leagues. It wasn’t very long after this that the Eastern Colored League was formed, so it was a great source of inspiration to show that you can build this.
It was, you know. If you build it, they will come to use an expression from Field of Dreams. And so that was Ruth Foster’s dream. If we build a league, black people will come and they will support the league.
Albert Cheng: Professor early. [00:21:00] I’m really enjoying, uh, you retell a lot of these stories and I wanna bring up another pitcher and hear you tell his story.
Leroy Satchel, page, one of the most gifted, iconic American professional baseball pitchers in history. And so he played in the, in the Negro Leagues, but later in Major League baseball with a career that spanned five decades and is a hall of famer as well. The Yankee Slugger, Joe Diaggio would say Paige was the best pitcher he ever faced.
Tell us about Paige.
Gerald Early: Yes. Satchel Paige, Leroy Satchel. Paige was a four black kid from Alabama. And he grew up, he was a hustling kid and he got into fights with the white kids around him because he couldn’t stand the way he was being treated. He couldn’t stand the segregation, he couldn’t stand the racial oppression.
He felt he was on the track to actually become a criminal, and he may have become a criminal except that he was arrested for stealing [00:22:00] and put. Into a reform school for black children in Mountain X, Alabama. And it was there that he learned the trade of baseball and that he became a baseball pitcher because this reform school, this black reformatory, believed that sports.
Not just good for physical fitness, but sports were, they were good for helping wayward kids get on the right path. So it was sports and music. ’cause he also sang when he was there. So these were the two areas that they felt could really help reform. Wayward kids came out of there after he was in there for five years.
And he was a baseball player. He had trained well enough to become a baseball player. He was an extraordinary pitcher. And the thing about Satchel Paige was that he was an extraordinary pitcher with basically one pitch, which was a fastball, but he had one of the greatest fastballs in the history of baseball.
Satchel Paige became a star because he was not only [00:23:00] a great picture, but he was a showman. He knew how to entertain crowds with his skill. He also earned the ire of Negro League owners of even some of his teammates because he was a very itinerary player. He would jump from team to team, whoever would offer him the most money.
He ignored contracts, so he was jumping around from team to team all the time. He would go anywhere where somebody would offer him more money. But he was an extraordinary player, a great showman. And if there was one name that made the Negro Leagues famous to people, generally, not just black people, but the people generally.
If they were going to name the name of a Negro League ball player in the thirties or forties, it would be Satchel. It would’ve been Satchel Paige. Now Paige always wanted to make it to the major leagues. He was jealous of Jackie Robinson for being the first player. He said, I should have been the first player to play in the Major leagues.
’cause I’m the one that made the [00:24:00] Negro Leagues. I’m the guy, I’m the star of the Negro Leagues. People know who I am. But he finally did make it with the Cleveland Indians and he had success. Limited success in the Negro Leagues, but at the time he made it to the Negro Leagues, he was over 40. So his career was pretty much at an end, but he still managed to do some good work.
When he was with the Cleveland Indians, he was signed by Bill Vek, who was running the Cleveland Indians at the time, that Indians had also integrated by signing the second black player. Younger black player from the Negro Leagues. After Jackie Robinson went to the Dodgers, the Cleveland Indians signed Larry Doby.
So Larry Doby and Satchel Page were playing for the Cleveland Indians in 1948. So it’s quite a story. And he made the Hall of Fame Satchel page, and he was the first black player to make the Hall of Fame, spent most of his career in the Negro Leagues and that was quite an accomplishment when that happened in the early 1970s.[00:25:00]
Albert Cheng: Fascinating. I think I heard you say earlier that year from Philly, we’re gonna have to talk about Pittsburgh. And so you write in your book that where essentially you call Pittsburgh the nucleus of the black baseball world. And I’m just looking at some of the, the show notes here. And Pittsburgh was a home to two teams, Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays.
I mean these two teams sounds like they were pretty dominant. 13 league pennants and. Produced 15 National Baseball Hall of Famers, including folks like Josh Gibson, cool, Papa Bell, buck Leonard. What made Pittsburgh the capital city of the Negro League and and tell us about some of those players that were on those teams.
Gerald Early: Well, a lot of people don’t know that Pittsburgh was a real mecca for black culture during the twenties, thirties and forties. A lot of very prominent and important black people came from. Pittsburgh in the world of jazz, for instance, [00:26:00] pianists like I’m Man Jamal and Earl Garner and Earl Hines. Were all from Pittsburgh.
Of course, the very famous playwright August Wilson. Was from Pittsburgh. So Pittsburgh had a very rich black culture. Pittsburgh also produced probably the largest circulating black newspaper in America for a time, even larger circulation in Chicago Defender. And that was the Pittsburgh Courier.
Pittsburgh Courier was an extremely influential newspaper when the Negro Leagues were resuscitated in 1933. The key behind that was Gus Greenley, who owned the Pittsburgh Crawfords. The Crawfords were named after a grill, uh, tavern that he owned, and he had his own field. It was not very often that you ran across Negro League team owners who had their own field.
Most of ’em had to depend on Major League fields in order to be able to play their games. But Gus Greenley had his [00:27:00] own field and he was determined. He was very interested in sports and he was determined that he wanted to have this team be a powerhouse team. He got competition from Cumberland Posey, who was the owner of the Homestead Grace.
The Homestead. Grace played in Pittsburgh. They also spent time playing in Washington DC so they actually wound up having an impact on two. Major cities in the Negro League circuit as Washington, DC and Pittsburgh. But Pittsburgh was able to support for a time having two major teams, and the rivalry between the two teams was intense about producing championships.
A lot of Negro League players went through Pittsburgh. Probably the most famous is Josh Gibson. Who made the Hall of Fame is considered to be the greatest hitter in Negro League history. Certainly one of the greatest, along with Oscar Charleston and some others Biz Mackey. [00:28:00] But Josh Gibson was a legendary player and he mostly made his name in Pittsburgh for a time.
Satchel Paige played there. He played for a time on the same team with Josh Gibson. But as I said before, he didn’t stay long with any team and he was soon gone. He ran into some arm problems and he was soon gone and finally got resurrected. With Kansas City Monarchs, Pittsburgh was a very important location for Negro League baseball, and I think it was crucial for the resuscitation of the game.
Remember this, that the league got resuscitation and Negro League baseball got its kind of second life with the resuscitation of the league in 1933. This is during the heart of the depression. You would think that, oh, this doesn’t seem like a very propitious time to start a baseball league, especially when you’re trying to appeal to a fan base that’s among the poorest people in the United States.
That is black people, but yet they [00:29:00] did this and Pittsburgh was the fulcrum for this, and it wasn’t success. The owners, the new owners. And some of the older, older owners kept baseball going during the depression, and finally during World War ii, the Negro Leagues actually made money during World War ii.
They actually turned over a pretty good profit. So it’s a powerful story about a particular city and black people in this particular city being able to support the teams that were there and being able to create a newspaper and a fan base. That made the Negro League viable in the 1930s and resurrected the leak, and that’s quite a story.
Albert Cheng: Let’s talk about Jackie Robinson and, and tell his story a bit. So this is the year’s 1947. The Brooklyn Dodgers called him up to the major leagues six days before the start of the season, and then on April 15th, he makes his Major League debut at EBTs Field, playing first base, [00:30:00] wearing number 42 before a crowd of.
Over 26,000 fans, more than 14,000 of whom were black. What’s the historic importance of Jackie Robinson Desegregating Major League Baseball, which by the way, occurred before the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown V Board decision, civil rights movement, even before the US military was desegregated. So let’s give Jackie Robinson story some, some time here.
Gerald Early: Well, it’s interesting that if you ask people the major team sports in the United States, who was the first black person to play professional basketball, or who was the first black person to play professional football? Most people couldn’t answer that. But if you ask people, who was the first black person to play?
Major League baseball, they’ll all say Jackie Robinson. That’s sort of correct, but technically it’s not because actually that person is Moses Fleetwood Walker back in the 19th century played for a team that was in [00:31:00] the American Association, and the American Association was a, was a major league team at the time.
So Robinson would be the first to have played it in the 20th century, but not the first ever to have played it. What makes Robinson an interesting person was why he was picked Robinson. Sports were basketball, football, track, and field. Baseball was not his greatest sport, by any means, means when he was in college.
But one of the things that made him appealing to Branch Rickey was because he went to UCLA. He was used to playing with white players. He was used to playing in an integrated setting. So this made him appealing to branch Rickey, even though baseball was not his number one by any means, sport. He played one year in the Negro Leagues and said he hated it so much.
He said that the Dodgers hadn’t signed up. He wasn’t gonna go back and play in the Negro Leagues ’cause he didn’t like it. So Robinson was outspoken in that way. His feelings about the Negro Leagues, which he thought did not treat the players well enough, and he [00:32:00] thought the league was not running a very professional manner.
This got him a lot of pushback. Um, some Negro League owners and, and most notably Effa Manley. The other thing that’s interesting about Robinson and his being picked to do this and integrating baseball was that he was court martialed when he was in the Army for refusing to go to the back of a bus at Camp Hood in Texas where he was stationed.
He refused to go to the back of a bus. He said that Army Regulations had said that it was fine. For him to sit anywhere on the buses and the buses have been integrated and the bus driver strongly disagreed with that. It turned out actually, Robinson was right. It also turned out that Robinson took some risk in doing that because there have been black people who had been at this time.
Shot for not moving to the back of a bus on a military base. So he was taking a bit of a chance, but he was a, he was an outspoken man. He was a very proud man. He was a very race proud man, and he was a man who didn’t [00:33:00] mind showing his temper. Now, all of that would seem to say, wow, maybe he, he wouldn’t have been such a good choice.
But actually all those things added up in Branch Ricky’s mind that he would be a great choice. He wanted somebody who was prideful. He wanted somebody who was healthy. He wanted somebody who was extremely competitive, which Robinson was an extremely competitive man, and he didn’t want anybody who was going to bring any kind of hint.
Of being an Uncle Tom or an entertainer or something like that. So that’s why Ricky was not interested in some other than his age, was not interested in somebody like Atch page who he thought was bringing those kind of qualities. And he wanted, Robinson was strictly a hard-nosed ball player, and so Robinson was selected.
For those kinds of reasons. Robinson opened the door and Robinson succeeded. Robinson succeeded against a whole bunch of, uh, had to put up with a whole bunch of stuff during the first couple years he was in the league and he had to put up with this, [00:34:00] and he made an agreement with Branch Rickey that he would not in any way fight back or anything when he was putting up, had to put up with all these insults in the leg and all this racist hazing he got from white players.
He put up with it. Robinson said he felt like a freak doing it ’cause he said it was unnatural to his nature to just simply tolerate this in some kind of pacifist way, but he did it. So it opened the door for a lot of things that happened afterward. I’m sure that it was an influence on the Army desegregating in 1948, and I’m sure that in many ways it was like the first domino.
For integration, and it led to a lot of other things being integrated in the country because Robinson succeeded and his success opened the door for a lot of other integration to take place. And so Robinson deserves all the accolades that he gets and all the attention that he has gotten over the years for what he did.
Albert Cheng: That is quite [00:35:00] the legacy. I think we have time to talk about one more player who left a mark too on, on baseball. Kurt Flood. Three time all star Gold glove winning Major league baseball player. Played for 15 seasons. Flood became one of the pivotal figures in the sports labor history. When he refused to accept a trade following the 1969 season, which made its way all the way to the US Supreme Court.
So talk about the background of that legal challenge and how this led to free agency and the, you know, the, the salaries that we see today.
Gerald Early: Major League Baseball has something called the reserve clause, which in a contract with a player means that that player is the property of that team. In perpetuity at least.
It used to mean that, that the player was the property of the team in perpetuity, and that the player could play for that team or not play at all. The team had a right [00:36:00] to trade the player. If the team released the player, then the player could become a free agent. And tried to sell his wares to any team that he could.
But most of the time, if a team was releasing a player was releasing a player who really didn’t have much market value. And so there wasn’t any kind of free agency such as we see today with star players being able to get very high bids. Curve flood was opposed to the trade to Philadelphia because he felt that he had served all those years with the Cardinals and that he had the right.
To at least be able to have some say about where he was going to go. He didn’t like the idea of just being treated like some kind of commodity or something on consignment or something like that, and just being sent against his will anywhere he wanted to go. So the whole principle of a athlete on a team sport, being able to have some kind of say about where he was [00:37:00] going to go was what?
Flood made a particularly salient issue at this time in the late 1960s. Now, flood of course, was. Part of a whole movement of black athletes at this time, of a growing kind of political consciousness among black athletes. At this time, Muhammad Ali, of course, had opposed the draft, and by 1969 was out of boxing because he had could no longer get a license because he had been convicted of violating the draft laws.
There was a movement in 1960 before 1968 to board for blacks. To boycott the Olympics, the Mexico c Olympics in 1968 that was being done to get South Africa out of the games when South Africa was no longer in the games. The boycott was called off, but there was still a protest at the game with the two sprinters, Tommy Smith and John Carlos raising a clinch fist when the national anthem was played, when they were on the stand getting [00:38:00] their medals.
So there was this growing sense of militancy among black athletes, and Kirk’s love was part of that weight, but there was also a growing sense of militancy among baseball players who felt they were being screwed by management and by team owners, and felt they were being terrifically underpaid. So there was a growing sense of we need to have a union that is going to have a strong leadership that’s going to get us something from the owners.
So that’s where Marvin Miller came in. They hired Marvin Miller to run the union, and Miller supported blood’s suit of baseball. Even though he told blood, you’re not gonna win, but he thought it was an important step. Galvanizing the players and also in informing the public about the issues concerning the treatment of baseball players.
And so Flood symbolized that very powerfully because of the nature of his career with the Cardinals and because he was [00:39:00] such an important player in the end, of course, he lost the suit. He lost when he went to the Supreme Court, but it did open the doors ultimately. To lead to free agency and Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally.
Ultimately, a few years after flood suit would succeed by not signing a contract and basically playing without a contract. And then the courts decided, okay, they played for a year without a contract, so they become free agents. That opened the door for free agency and for the rise of free agency in baseball, and ultimately the rise of free agency in other sports.
But Kirk Flood was really. The galvanizing force for that, even though there had been suits against the reserve clause before flood. Flood got the attention that really galvanized the public and really made the issue salient.
Albert Cheng: Alright, so I want this last question to ask you to reflect on the legacy that black baseball players had on our national [00:40:00] pastime.
I mean, look, we, it’s not difficult to list some of the greatest players in history who are also black, like as a Bay Area kid, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds and Ricky Henderson obviously come to my mind. But you’ve named a bunch here, so I’ll give you the last word here before I prompt you to read from your book.
What’s the legacy that black baseball players have contributed to baseball?
Gerald Early: Well, I think that black players brought a real sense of love of the game because after all, for so long, they had to play the game under more difficult circumstances than white players did, which I think showed their kind of dedication and love for the game that I think is important in the spirit of the game.
I also think they brought a particular kind of style to the game. And so far as bringing elements of both power and speed to the game that was not as prevalent in the game before the presence of black players. I also think, of course, naturally they brought black fans to the [00:41:00] game. Because when black players began to play in the major leagues in the early years, black fans followed these players and followed Major League baseball because of the black players who were in it.
So I think that black players not only integrated. The teams, they integrated the fan base of Major League Baseball by bringing black fans with them. So I think all of those things were extremely important to the development of the game to make it truly America’s game. Finally, you know, I guess the final thing that could be said was that black people made the game inclusive.
This, you know, also included the rise of dark-skinned Latino players who were able to get into the game and rise in the game because of Robinson and because of the Black American ball players who were playing. So people like Minnie Manza. All the way up to somebody like Ronald Laia Jr. All owe. They’re being able to play the game because of early [00:42:00] black Americans like Robinson and Don Newcomb and Roy Campanella integrating and playing the game.
So Black American players not only made the game inclusive in many ways, they made the game international and I think they deserve a lot of recognition and credit for that.
Albert Cheng: Well, speaking of recognition and credit, lemme invite you to read a passage from your book.
Gerald Early: In 1920, a year after the Black Star Line was launched.
Andrew Ru Foster, a Black American with a grand strategy was certain that he could organize a baseball league and that black people would support it. After all, many of the teams and the men who could run them already existed. Black baseball was not a pipe dream, but a reality much more so than Marcus Garvey’s Black Star line.
Black men knew how to play baseball, and Rue Foster knew everything there was to know about baseball, about how to play it and how to manage a team. He knew what a league [00:43:00] should be and how to bring it about. It was simply a matter of organizing the key to black people’s future in the post World War I world.
It was the age of the new Negro, the age of redefinition. When black people, the black world, could throw off the shackles of white oppression, reform their identities, and succeed at anything they set their minds to if they organized, and a major step was organized baseball, which white observers said black people could not do.
White people believed that black people were too disorganized to ever become truly professional. The 1920s would be a new age of black organizing and a new age of black rivalry.
Alisha Searcy: Wow. What history? Thank you so much, professor, for joining us today. This was, I think, a really important interview. Learned a whole lot about history and baseball all at the same time, so thanks for your work and your contributions.
Gerald Early: Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.[00:44:00]
Alisha Searcy: Well, Albert, you know what I have to say? That was fun. I’m not a baseball person, but I am a history person and this was a really interesting. Interview and I think I might wanna go to a baseball game or two. What do you think?
Albert Cheng: Yeah, I mean, it’s still early enough in the spring here, and you’ve got plenty of baseball left to play, but it’s not every day you get the opportunity to dig into sports history and here’s some of these lesser known and untold stories, so,
Alisha Searcy: mm-hmm.
Albert Cheng: I really appreciated this episode and this guest.
Alisha Searcy: Me too. Very inspiring. Well, as always, before we go, of course we’ve gotta do our tweet of the week. And this week it comes from EdWeek and it’s entitled The Most Popular Instructional Strategies That Don’t Work. Hmm.
Albert Cheng: We were just [00:45:00] talking about fabs earlier, weren’t we?
Alisha Searcy: Weren’t we? So that’s gonna be very interesting. So to our listeners, make sure you check that there’s all kinds of fun and interesting instructional strategies that I think we’ve all tried in some capacity or another are believed in. So let’s see what you think. Anyway, Albert, great to be with you as always.
Next week, we are looking forward to having Julie Young, who is the founding president and CEO of Florida Virtual School in Arizona State University’s Prep Digital, and the author of the new book Say Yes, how Virtual Became Reality. We look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.