Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball [Hardcover]

Brad Snyder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2003

A witty and frank look at the ad biz from one of its most respected voices Advertising has become an endless stream of cliches, cheesy productions, miscast celebrities, and gratuitous sex--and take-no-prisoners Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield has had enough. In the often hilarious, always dead-on And Now a Few Words from Me, Garfield looks at the best and the worst in today's advertising as he tells advertising pros that it's time to swallow their own egos, return clients' rights to the forefront, and--once and for all--eliminate bad advertising from the face of the earth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Snyder looks at the roots of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball, but examines that historic event from a variety of angles. This well-documented and enjoyable account illuminates the life of Sam Lacy, a crusading black journalist for a Washington, D.C., black weekly, and his efforts to force major league baseball to integrate. But the book is also a fascinating and largely untold story about the unholy but profitable alliance between Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, and the dynamic but shady Negro League team owner Cum Posey, founder of the Homestead Grays, a storied Negro League franchise founded in Pittsburgh. Using the burgeoning black middle class of WWII Washington, D.C., as a social backdrop, Snyder details how Negro League owners like Posey allied themselves financially with white Major League owners, renting segregated Major League ballparks (at exorbitant rates) for their Negro League teams while the white teams were on the road. The practice became particularly profitable in Washington after Posey moved his Homestead Grays (and such black stars as Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson) to D.C. from Pittsburgh in 1940. Disgusted by the Senators' racist owners and the team's inept play, black fans flocked to the pennant-winning Grays' games, which outdrew the Senators' games. Snyder also sketches the lives of great players like Buck Leonard with great sensitivity, insight and historical context. The book tells two stories: one is how the Griffiths, a legendary baseball family, killed baseball in Washington, D.C., through their own narrow-minded greed and racism; the other is the story of Lacy and Wendell Smith, his fellow black Hall of Fame sportswriter, and the extraordinary black athletes of the Negro Leagues and their determination to play baseball at its highest level.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Historical accounts of major league baseball's integration too often begin and end with one white owner, Branch Rickey, and one black player, Jackie Robinson. But, as with any significant historical milestone, things are never as simple as they seem. Snyder, who covered baseball for the Baltimore Sun, spent 10 years researching a little-known side skirmish in the battle to integrate the national pastime, one that took place in the shadow of the federal government. This struggle involved the white owner of the major-league Washington Senators, Clark Griffith, who was not as evil as he was penurious, and a black player, Buck Leonard, who was a more talented player than Robinson and probably every bit as courageous. The wild card in the Washington mix was Sam Lacy, a black journalist inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1997. Lacy, an eloquent supporter of integration, covered the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team that played in Griffith's ballpark when his Senators were on the road. Griffith vigorously opposed major-league baseball's integration because the rent from the Grays kept his other team afloat. Leonard, the star of the Grays, often referred to as the "black Lou Gehrig," was thought by many to be the logical choice to integrate the game. Snyder weaves the personal stories of Lacy, Griffith, and Leonard into a textured account of a time when baseball symbolized the nation at large and when those with vision understood the implications of integrating an experience shared by so many Americans. A fascinating, little-known chapter in the familiar story of baseball's color line. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (January 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071408207
• ISBN-13: 978-0071408202
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Homestead Grays - news to even this 4th generation DC guy!, January 29, 2003

By 

Jeffrey Peikin (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (Hardcover)

Brad Snyder shows us that early 20th Century African-Americans weren't only progressing in academics at the nearby venerated Howard University; they were also making strides in professional sports by sharing Griffith Stadium, which was practically on Howard U's campus,with the beloved but hapless Washington Senators!

That a "negro" team was able to utilize the very same facilities as the Senators in the still very Southern and provincial Washington, DC of the 1930's - 1950's came as a shock to me.

DC was the last NFL team to integrate pro football with Bobby Mitchell in the late 1950's; George Preston Marshall was no civil rights activist, and had to be forced to integrate his Redskins.

It is, therefore, thrilling to see how Washington, DC played a part in the eventuality of pro sports integration, realized in Jackie Robinson's signing in 1947. Snyder tells an interesting tale that all who study the sociological development of a fully integrated Major League Baseball must read!

(Now Brad....send Selig a note to bring us back our team! :}

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond a Doubt, April 18, 2003

By 

Jack M. Berk (Bethlehem, Pa.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (Hardcover)

Beyond a doubt this is a well documented, interesting to read, important addition to the history of black baseball in America.
Snyder recreates the era of parallel universes for black and white Americans when contact between the races was rare. All baseball fans were cheated out of seeing the best players compete because some had darker skins than others. The frustations of ballplayers who knew that they could compete but where denied the opportunity is presented against the background of a segregated America.
As a public libray director and an individual baseball book collector I heartily recommend this title.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding historical work, February 18, 2005

By 

Andrew C. Sharp "senators24" (Cream Ridge, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of the Senators : The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (Paperback)

"Beyond the Shadow of the Senators'' is a must read for any serious student of baseball history. The author put a massive amount of research into this engaging account, of which I knew nothing even though I grew up in Washington not long after these events took place. This is an outstanding work in every regard. I have never met the author and I am not an African-American (not that anybody should care); I am just a fan of baseball and its history. If you are, too: Read this book.