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  • Integrating Cleveland Baseball: Media Activism, the Integration of the Indians and the Demise of the Negro League Buckeyes
  • Douglas K. Lehman
Stephanie M. Liscio . Integrating Cleveland Baseball: Media Activism, the Integration of the Indians and the Demise of the Negro League Buckeyes. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 225 pp. Paper, $29.95.

Stephanie M. Liscio has filled a lacuna in the history of the Negro Leagues with her 2010 book, Integrating Cleveland Baseball. The efforts of African American citizens in Cleveland, Ohio, relating to the Negro Leagues and their push for integration of the major leagues have not received the coverage of those in cities such as Kansas City, Chicago, or New York, but Liscio's book ends that drought. Well documented and researched, Liscio presents a straightforward, chronological approach to the rise and fall of the Cleveland Buckeyes-who won the Negro League World Series in 1945.

The success of the Negro Leagues in Cleveland was mixed prior to World War II. As a northern city with a large African American population, it is somewhat surprising that a Negro League team in Cleveland was never able to last more than a few years. But, as Liscio notes, one of the interesting aspects about Cleveland was that it did not seem to matter if a team failed, there was always another team to step in. Cleveland's first connection with the Negro Leagues was in 1922, and from then until the arrival in 1942 of the Cleveland & Cincinnati Buckeyes, ten different teams played Negro League baseball in Cleveland. [End Page 150]

Liscio skillfully weaves the story of Cleveland's Negro Leagues teams throughout the book and presents her arguments for the role African American media played in the struggles faced by the Cleveland owners and teams. She explores the love-hate relationship certain members of the African American press had with Negro Leagues as they campaigned for integration of the all-white major leagues, all the while knowing that integration would destroy the Negro Leagues.

The African American weekly, the Cleveland Call & Post, played a major role in the support or non-support of the many Cleveland Negro League teams. While they supported the Buckeyes, the Cleveland Call & Post writers and editors were not without their criticism of the team. They questioned the role of ownership and their efforts to promote the team to Cleveland's African American citizens. Examples included the Buckeyes continuing to feature a deceased player on billboards, not because of the morbid nature of the advertising, but because it indicated a lack of desire on the part of ownership to ensure fans knew the players on the team.

Another factor pointed out by Liscio (and one that haunted most Negro Leagues teams) was the issue of their playing venue. In most cities, the stadiums were owned by white men, an especially galling issue for members of the African American press, and could only be used by the Negro Leagues teams when the white teams were not at home. In Cleveland, the problem was doubled by the presence of two major-league facilities, the gigantic Municipal Stadium, built in an effort to lure the 1932 Olympics to Cleveland, and League Park. Both sites were used by the Cleveland Indians, and both were used by Cleveland's Negro League franchises. More than once the Buckeyes were scheduled to play at Municipal Stadium, hopeful of a crowd of more than thirty thousand, only to be disappointed when fewer than half that number showed up.

Even as the Buckeyes were winning their second Negro American League (NAL) championship in 1947, the relationship between the team, the city, and the press was deteriorating. In mid-1947, Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland Indians, signed Larry Doby, a star player on the Newark Eagles, to a major-league contract. With this move, interest in the Negro Leagues began to die in Cleveland. If the Indians now provided opportunities for African American ballplayers, why would anyone care about the Negro Leagues? The Buckeyes entered the 1947 Negro World Series as favorites, yet fell to the New York Cubans, 4-1. Following the season, the man who many considered the glue that held...

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