Customer Reviews

Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959

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This herculean effort came in handy ino providing background on a parallel project I'm working on (a baseball card or photo and an autograph of all blacks, black cubans, dominicans, puerto ricans, and panamanians who debuted from 1947-59).

The author filled a few gaps in my player identification and did a fine write up of each, especially some of the lesser lights of whom little has ever been written.

However, in identifying whether a player qualifies as black, the question must be asked "Would he have been allowed to play before Jackie R.? Clearly, Orlando Pena would have.

However, three other dark skinned hispanics were omitted from his book, but included in my collection--Jose Valdivielso(1955 debut), Ozzie Alvarez (1958 debut), and Zoilo (aka Zorro) Versalles (1959 debut) who bitterly remarked after a 1965 World Series loss to Los Angeles "Well I tell you one thing, these Dodgers they no win the pennant in the American League!" Sadly, he fell on hard times later in his life and was forced to hock his MVP award...

Overall, in spite of these corrections, it is worthy of inclusion in the library of any serious baseball freader/collector.

I like this book. I like black baseball players. Jackie Robinson is my hero, he played for the Dodgers, and was very black. I think that I will start liking Thomas Edison Alston better because of his story on page 108-09. He was a tall black man from North Carolina, I live in South Carolina so that is close to my home. I am not black though, if that matters to you. I have a learning disorder and writing this essay will help with bettering my condition. I think that if I lived in 1947-59 I would like black people better than those mean white baseball players did. I mean some of those players names I have heard before because they had strong black powers to hit the ball far, like Hank Aaron, he played in Atlanta, I live near where he played too, and my daddy watched him hit home runs very far. He was number 44.