The failure of Major League Baseball owners to integrate until the Brooklyn Dodgers introduced Jackie Robinson in 1947 was not only racist. It was also bad for business and bad for the win-loss column.
Epplin casts the team as emblematic of America’s sense of optimism in the years immediately following World War II: They were integrated, one of only three teams that year with Black players. And their owner, Bill Veeck, was ahead of his time in both racial politics and the forward-thinking ways he’d draw crowds to the stadium, using then-gimmicks like fireworks, live music and even a children’s nursery so parents could enjoy the game.
Veeck, who was white, grew up in Chicago attending Negro League games and had a progressive, inclusive sensibility. He was famously an iconoclast — he once organized a promotion where fans voted on in-game strategic decisions — andOur Teamunderscores that it often takes an outlier like Veeck to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Flatiron Books/macmillan
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Epplin presents Feller in complicated terms. On one hand, he was progressive: Back then, agreeing to play against Black players — and be exposed to defeat — required an uncommon open-mindedness. On the other hand, he stubbornly insisted that Black players had been kept out of the Majors because of a deficit of talent in the Black community rather than racial discrimination.
Luke Epplin.Beth Parker
All four men were instrumental in Cleveland’s run to the World Series. First, the team won a one-game playoff against the Boston Red Sox to win the American League, then they beat the Boston Braves to win the title. But that euphoric, hopeful moment was short-lived. As Epplin writes, “The promise of 1948 wasn’t kept.”
This was true for the baseball team: The notoriously hard-luck franchise hasn’t won a championship since.
It was also true for the city, which in the latter half of the 20th century fell on hard times, hemorrhaged population and became something of a national punchline.
Our Team: Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball(Flatiron Books) went on sale Tuesday.
source: people.com
