Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball, and: Our White Boy (review)

In the decades since the 1960s, football, especially the professional game, has greatly increased in popularity, not only in Texas, but throughout the United States. Because of this five-decade growth in the status of America's Game, many Texans are unaware of the National Pastime's past influence on the state's history, including the more than 110 Texas towns and cities that have hosted professional baseball franchises. It is safe to assume then that even fewer are aware of the role of semi-professional and amateur baseball in developing the Lone Star State's culture. And certainly even fewer are cognizant of black Texans' impact on the game at both the state and national levels. With hopes of changing this situation, Playing in Shadows and Our White Boy, both part of the Sport in the American West Series, provide valuable insights into the effects of the game on African American culture and the role of the game in integrating Texas communities.

Rob Fink's Playing in Shadows examines baseball as played by African Americans, both semi-pro and professional, in Texas and the contributions of black Texans to the game at the national level from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Using secondary sources in general and some primary sources, mostly newspaper articles and interviews, Fisk compiles a brief history of black Texans and the summer game, exalting the role of prominent Texas-born African Americans in the success of the professional Negro Leagues. Most prominent, of course, was Andrew "Rube" Foster, to whom Fink dedicates an entire chapter, almost one-tenth of the book. Other notable black Texans who became stars in the Negro Leagues, including Louis Santap, "Smokey" Joe Williams, and Willie Wells, receive appropriate mention in Fisk's chronicle.

Because the two chapters on these and other great black stars, many of whom are now enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, rely heavily on secondary sources, serious baseball historians and fans of the Negro Leagues are undoubtedly familiar with the information. Still, Playing in Shadows provides a service by not only condensing the key feats of these stars into one monograph, but, more importantly, connecting them to the Lone Star State's overall role in "shaping the state's African American community, as well as the Negro Leagues and the game of baseball" (13). Yet, Fink asserts that the local stars, teams, and leagues had the greater impact and reflect most directly the black culture of Texas in the twentieth century.

In the chapters on the professional Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League (1929-1931), the various semi-pro leagues, and the Houston Eagles of the Negro American League, Fink's reliance on primary sources is profound and, thus, his contribution to baseball history is most significant. Here the author weaves together various stories of the attempts and, sadly, the failures of organizing leagues, signing players, and attracting fans. As did white teams and leagues, African Americans had to overcome depression and wars. But black owners also had to deal with the civil rights movement and the "push for integration of white teams and leagues" (91). Success of that push eventually doomed both the professional and semi-pro African American teams, statewide and nationally.

The integration of professional white baseball, at least at the major league level, is as well documented and well known to even the casual fan and many non-fans as the attempts to integrate black leagues and teams is unknown and undocumented. And Fink does briefly mention Eddie Klep, Lou Chirban, and Louis Clarizion, white players signed by Negro American League teams who "hoped to attract more white fans" (120) in order to compete...