Baseball's Peerless Semipros: The Brooklyn Bushwicks of Dexter Park (review)

In the last paragraph of his forward to Baseball's Peerless Semipros, Jack Lang, past president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, closes by suggesting that "Tom Barthel, who spent years researching his subject, will take you on a roller coaster ride through that grand and almost forgotten era" (vi). Those words prove to be true, though perhaps not in the manner originally intended by Lang. There is no question that Barthel spent countless hours researching the era of semipro baseball, as this is his second book on that time period in the last three years (Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games, 1901-1962 was published by McFarland in 2007). And yet, despite a wealth of interesting historical anecdotes—drawn almost exclusively from newspaper box scores and articles—Jack Lang's aforementioned roller coaster ride comes not so much from the thrills and stars of baseball's "golden" era, but rather from marginal writing, poor documentation, and little evidence that the text was edited before publication.

Baseball's Peerless Semipros tells the story of Max Rosner's Brooklyn Bushwicks, the strongest (and most profitable) semipro team in the first half of the twentieth century. Barthel chronologically orders the team's history into eight chapters covering varying time periods between 1918 and 1951, ending with a brief epilogue which covers the death of Rosner and the impact he had on the game. The first chapter, "The Beginning," offers a somewhat scattered, but detailed, history of the origins of baseball in Brooklyn. Barthel chronicles Max Rosner's assent from a young Jewish immigrant making cigars out of his garage, to his fortuitous partnership with Manhattan booking agent and Inter-City Association organizer Nat Strong, who controlled when and where semipro teams played. Rosner first got into semipro baseball "to boost his cigar business by sponsoring a team," the Paramounts, who "played in Paramount park in Williamsburg as well as other venues" (6). Semipro clubs were most often named for the neighborhood they played in, and when Rosner formed the Bushwicks in 1913, they retained their Brooklyn identity despite moving to Dexter Park, which was actually located in Queens on the Brooklyn border. Rosner understood that the best talent wins ballgames and that good teams draw bigger crowds, and so he continually poured his revenues back into player contracts and improvements to his ballpark. Despite some annoying grammatical issues, the first chapter finishes fairly strong, leaving readers hungry for more.

Beginning with chapter two, Barthel's heavy reliance on newspaper sources threatens to derail the entire project. What follows is a handful of incredibly interesting stories buried beneath a year-by-year recounting of box scores, delivered in a style that might be called "Bill James-lite." Like James in his Baseball Abstracts, Barthel's tone is conversational, yet authoritative. At times, he even manages to create that sense of "being there," allowing the reader to get a strong, personal sense of historical context. Unfortunately, Barthel lacks the wit and sharp analytical eye of James. Barthel's strength is offering a detailed chronicle of baseball history; those looking for new insights or probing cultural analysis will not find much of either in Baseball's Peerless Semipros.

That is not to say, however, that we should completely disregard Barthel's latest book. The problems with the text primarily have to do with style and documentation (as just one example of many errors, there is no in-text citation for the first endnote). But Baseball's Peerless Semipros does offer a fuller understanding of the importance of semipro teams like the Bushwicks to Negro league baseball. So long as the competition was strong and willing to travel to Dexter Park, Max Rosner's Bushwicks took on all challengers, regardless of skin color. So strong was that connection, in fact, that when television and integration brought an end to the Negro leagues, the semipro clubs faded with them, due in no small part to the loss...