Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball [Hardcover]

Lawrence D. Hogan (Author), Jules Tygiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2006

Celebrating African America's contribution to our great national pastime, this comprehensive, lively history combines vivid narrative, visual impact, and a unique statistical component, to recreate the excitement and passion of the Negro Leagues. Packed with stories, biographical essays, scores of archival photographs and other evocative artifacts, it is an important contribution to sports history and a wonderful tribute to the players and teams who wrote a unique chapter in the annals of baseball and American culture.


National Geographic is proud to present this compelling volume, compiled by a who's who of authorities on the subject. Drawing on years of research, Shades of Glory traces the history of black baseball from the 19th century to the first great teams, such as the Cuban Giants, and on to the era of the vibrant barnstorming teams from the East Coast, Chicago, and Cuba. The unparalleled Rube Foster started the first Negro League in 1920, with such dominant teams as the Chicago American Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs. Pittsburgh soon produced two of the greatest teams of all time, the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, featuring such stars as Satchel Paige, John Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and many more. Their superb brand of baseball rivaled the best of the major leagues until the historic signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Shades of Glory chronicles a bygone era of black baseball and the stars who were shadowed by racial prejudice, but now shine forth in all their sparkling brilliance.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Histories of baseball's Negro Leagues abound, beginning with Robert Peterson's 1970 classic, Only the Ball Was White, but few offer the scope of this volume, which explores the entire spectrum of African American baseball. In July 2000, major-league baseball granted $250,000 to the Hall of Fame for a comprehensive history of African American involvement in the game from 1860 to 1960. The result, a cooperative work by teams of historians and baseball experts, was an 800-page manuscript entitled Out of the Shadows. This book is a distillation of that work. Hogan himself was a part of the research team and is an expert on the Negro Leagues. There are a number of player profiles and photos from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s as well as an examination of the entrepreneurial business climate that kept the leagues going even as it exploited the players. It's interesting to note that, of the hundreds of all-star games played in the off-season between teams of the top black players versus the best of the major leagues', the black teams won more than 60 percent of the time. Along with on-the-field reportage, Hogan also provides valuable historical context, placing the Negro Leagues in the socioeconomic fabric of the time. This is an important, informative, and entertaining contribution to sports history. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Lawrence D. Hogan is a senior professor of history at Union County College in New Jersey. He is an expert on the history of black baseball and his touring exhibit on the subject has traveled nationwide.

Jules Tygiel, a history professor at San Francisco State University, is the author of Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, and Past Time: Baseball as History, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was founded in 1939 and has become an American institution. Dedicated to chronicling and preserving baseball history and honoring the sport's foremost figures, it annually attracts more than 350,000 visitors to its home in Cooperstown, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 079225306X
• ISBN-13: 978-0792253068
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #604,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Narrative, March 14, 2006

By 

Signe Knutson (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Hardcover)

Shades of Glory is a very good narrative history of Black Baseball. It includes pre-segregation players such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, the Heyday of the Negro leagues and the teams that continued to play after the color barrier was broken. The book is thorough and I think will help people understand baseball's place in Black society of the time. I found only one weakness - For the real sports statistician, the book is disappointing for its only brief section on players stats.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent History, August 1, 2006

By 

Todd Hawley (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Hardcover)

There have been only a few books written about the history of black baseball, a glaring error which Shades of Glory helps to correct. Before I read this book, I had no idea of the number of various independent black baseball teams that existed in the late 19th century. Nor did I know of various players who stood out in Black baseball over the decades it existed. Yes of course I knew of Satchel Paige (who I got to see pitch when I was a young teenager), Cool Papa Bell, Buck O'Neill, Josh Gibson, but I learned about so many others through sidebars this book provides. It also provides a detailed history of the few blacks who played in organized baseball before the color line became so rigid. The history provided in this book is very good and details the independent teams that came and went in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the attempts to organize and maintain leagues, how Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier affected black baseball, and how his doing this effectively put an end to black baseball (which I'm sure was at the same time exciting and bittersweet to all Negro league ballplayers). I also enjoyed reading about the migration of blacks from the south to Northern cities like Chicago and how that helped further along black baseball in the Windy City.

The stats of various black baseball stars at the back of the book were pretty good, considering that league statistics, standings and even box scores of Negro league games were not always available and remain difficult to track decades later.

One small disappointment I had was there was no mention of black baseball on the West Coast. There were several West Coast black semi pro teams that barnstormed through the first part of the 20th century. There was even a West Coast Negro League (West Coast Baseball Association) that played in 1946. The league champion Oakland Larks later barnstormed after the league folded. I was surprised that there was not even a cursory mention of this team in the book, since one of their pitchers (Lionel Wilson) later became a judge and then mayor of Oakland, California.

Other than this minor issue, I felt this book very well described the "rise and fall" of black baseball.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shades of greatness, November 24, 2007

By 

Rodrigo Llamozas (the last cubicle at the end of the hall...) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Hardcover)

It's fantastic to finally find a thorough and well written history book on African American Baseball. After all these years there's still so little to read about all the games and all the players that were such an important part of Black history and of the great sport of baseball

Hogan does an amazing job at presenting detailed stories of most of the more important actors (players, owners, managers, journalists, and even fans). I especially appreciated the information on nineteenth century's teams and early twentieth century

The amount of information on some of the greatest ball players that were never given the opportunity to play in the big leagues is simply amazing

My only problem with the book is that although it is written in chronological order, there are some times were the stories jump from age to age -- for example, after describing how one of the leagues collapsed in the late 20s and started to tell about baseball in the early 30s, it suddenly jumps to another story in the early 20s

All in all, a great read and a must for all serious baseball fans -- and not just African American Baseball fans or Negro League buffs...