Customer Reviews

60' 6'' and Other Distances from Home: The (Baseball) Life of Mose YellowHorse

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I was very impressed by the author's creative way in which he presented this biography. Fuller exercises his gifted skills as a poet as well as delivers a well researched history of Mose Yellowhorse. It's both entertaining and informative.

I don't normally read sports biographies, however, a friend of mine, aware of my interest in American Indian history, recommended this book to me after she'd had the priviledge of attending one of the author's readings. Fascinating indeed! The life and legend of Mose Yellowhorse is told wonderfully and passionately through the talents of Todd Fuller. This book is an amazing journey from start to finish. Take it from me, I could not put the book down!

I read this book when I was writting a graduate Thesis for baseball history. Good read to get information. Understand that he wanted a unique way to set up book. Maybe only drawback if reading for information. Is good that it includes oral history of the man, statistical history and analytical history. A good read for entertainment or historical review.

Through Fuller's careful research and beautifully written poetry, we get a unique, intriguing, and entertaining biography on the life of Mose Yellowhorse. As a proud member of the Pawnee Nation, I highly commend Fuller for his dedication to see this work to its completion. For without him, Mose's story would have remained untold and what a shame that would have been for Native American history, Native American sports history, the Pawnee Nation and for Mose Yellowhorse himself.

...1) This book is about the first full-blood American Indian to play baseball in the major leagues. That he accomplished such a difficult thing in an era when not even African Americans were allowed to play in the majors, is something that all American Indians should be proud of (not just the Pawnee). 2) From this book, Non-Native society learns that Indians DO exist, not just in the historical sense but in contemporary, everyday existence. Non-Native society learns that Indians CAN accomplish great things, such as, playing major league baseball. 3) It could be that Yellowhorse's own words are absent from this book because he passed away nearly 40 years ago and also, it states very clearly in the book that Yellowhorse left no journals or other writings behind. (Possible explanation for that "emptiness," I don't know).

What the author has done in this work is bring together varied perspectives--from Native to non-Native--in order to tell the life story of a neglected, yet historical, Indian ballplayer. (I had never really heard of Mose YellowHorse before reading the book.) That someone has finally taken up this task is admirable, and the author does it with as much research, creativity, and passion as can be mustered. For that, I think he is to be thanked. As a baseball fan, I was intrigued to read about such accounts involving Ruth, Cobb, etc. To include well-written and balanced poems alongside cartoons, tape transcripts, and letters is quite a feat. I first became interested in reading this book after reading consecutive strong reviews in Booklist and the Native American Times.

Todd was my English Comp teacher in college, good guy, made me believe I could write and I havent stopped since. I was so proud when I read this book.

Save your money and your time. I recommend leaving this potshot at the Native American non-fiction genre in the pile of unread books next to the rest of the myth-and-legend creation stories written and edited by "white" authors where it belongs. The problem is not Fuller's overambitious and sometimes nonsensical prose, the lack of basic evidence to support much of what he deems factual within the text itself, or the fact that Fuller himself presents fuzzy portrait of the man he is trying to recognize. The words of Yellowhorse himself are absent from this book; in that emptiness, there is little left that furthers the recognition of the integrity of Native Peoples in history, aside from that which has been outlined being of great importance in conventional, non-Native society.