African American Athletes And The Baseball Of Professionalism

In the book titled Race, Sports, and the American Dream, it discussed how sports helped change the place of African-American in society. “Sports was well segregated deep into the 20th century” (Smith 9). How college football looked in America in the 1950s was exactly how American society looked in the 1950s, segregated and racist. African-American athletes in college football helped fight and negate stereotypes because it showed that they are equally as good

On December 13th, 1923, a black boy named Larry Doby was born in Camden, South Carolina to David Doby and Etta Brooks. No one knew his life would bring such a significant cultural change in the sport of baseball. Larry Doby was the second black man to play major league baseball, after Jackie Robinson that is. Even though Doby isn’t as well known as Robinson, he still had the same struggles in his baseball career. “Larry Doby: The Struggle of the American League’s First Black Player” is a great book on Larry Doby’s life and how he came about playing baseball in the major

If states are the laboratories of democracy, then sports are the arena in which it is tested. This book serves as a review of racial integration and the changing dynamics in sports from 1890 - 1980. Charles Martin aims for the reader to understand why it was common place for white southerners to compete against “non-black” ethnic minorities (E.G. Native Americans, Chinese), but an issue when even a single African American was on an opposing team. Benching Jim Crow explains to the reader that the persistence of segregation lay with overarching cultural mentalities left over from the Civil War, but shifts in position came from external (financial), and internal (students and players). Though offering little insight into the legal and political impacts of Jim Crow itself, Martin paints a detailed, but redundant, narrative of the rise and fall of Jim Crow in athletics.

For starters, Mandelbaum is very long winded his chapters go on forever. There are certain ideas that he can convey in 5 pages but instead, he chooses to do so in 15 pages. His writing style is so plain that it makes following the chapters that much harder. The information that Mandelbaum presents about in relation to the sports of baseball, football and basketball are good I just wish his chapters were shorter. Information can get lost quickly if there are 80 pages of information to read about one sport. Aside from that, I learned a lot from his chapter about basketball. In chronological order, Mandelbaum writes how the game of basketball shifted from a sport that was primarily white to primarily African American. The first African American player to enter the NBA was in 1950. By the 1980s four out of every five starting players in the league were black. Mandelbaum makes the argument that African Americans were needed in the league or else the game would not have been as developed as it is now. “The game as it developed would have been far poorer in every way without them” (Mandelbaum,248). The same time that the professional game was developing so too was the street game. In chapter 4 I learned about the “winner-take-all” market. According to investopedia.com, this is a concept in which the best performers are able to capture a very large share of the rewards, and the remaining competitors are left with very little.” The chances of most African American making it to the NBA is very slim, according to the book chances are 135,800 to

In recent history it has been evident that some of the most popularize sports in America have been dominated and overran by African American and other minority athletes. In turn when the coaching and management positions in sports are analyzed and broken down, the number of minority coaches and managers in sport are almost non-existent and have been since those sports organization became established.

The role of the family value system in influencing Black male athletes appears to be less important than that of White male athletes. Although the Black community makes up 12% of the collegiate population, only 3% of those have a Ph.D. and only 6.7% have a Bachelors degree, (Hu, 2004:1). The value system in African American families appears to be focused more on immediate gratification, rather than education, which seems to be a bigger value in White families. Basketball players White vs. Black have some goals to meeting in order to become successful in the sport of basketball. There are some influences that make some of the White and Black

The topic of race in sport, particularly African Americans in sport, has long been a controversial yet, widely discussed matter. Human and social issues are never easy subjects to discuss or debate, and racial differences tend to provoke very strong reactions. To begin, we will explore those whom claim that black athletes excel in sports as a result of their biological make up. Of all players in the NBA, more than 75% of them are black; of all players in the WNBA, more than 70% of them are black; of all players in the NFL, more than 65% of them are black (Hoenig, 2014). Evidently, black athletes make up a vast majority of these sports in the United States. Athletes must be of elite caliber to have the ability to play at this level, so this

     "Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.

Negro baseball leagues have a deep historical significance. Racism and “Jim Crow” laws encouraged segregation of African-Americans and whites. Arguably, the players on the negro baseball leagues were some of the best ever. Even today they are still being recognized and honored for their wonderful contribution to baseball as a whole. It started when major league owners had made a “gentleman’s agreement” to keep blacks from playing in the game. The barrier that went up was finally broken with a few black players being signed into white teams in the 1940s. It was once said by Martin Luther King Jr., “[Segregation] gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, it gives the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” While that is true of

Many people in major league baseball attempted to stop segregation in the sport, it wasn’t even close to get accomplished until Brooklyn Dodger 's general manager, Branch Rickey began the "great experiment". The Jim Crow policies of baseball had been changed ever since 1945 when Rickey and Jackie Robinson from the Negro League 's Kansas City Monarchs was placed onto a contract that would place Jackie into the major leagues in 1947.

Sports was the same way every sport had a nonprofeccinal black team and they could only play against other black teams. Branch Rickey didn't think this was right so he started looking for not only a good athlete, but also be able to control himself. Jackie Robinson had been playing baseball in the small teams that were open for him so when he heard that a professional team was looking for a black player he acted upon it. He was put onto the team and when people heard the news they were outraged. People thought that peoples skin determined their rights and when one African American got this right, it gave everyone the right to try for the

Baseball, America’s so-called national pastime, has a history that closely mirrors the country’s own. Specifically, for most of the first half of the twentieth century, white and black Americans played in entirely separate leagues like much of the heavily segregated society at the time. White owners and general managers would simply not allow black ballplayers on their teams, regardless of their skill level. While whites had organized baseball, a rigid professional system complete with minor leagues and farming system, blacks had their own all-black leagues. The history of these leagues is fairly complicated and follows a story-like arc with successes and failures. In Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, historian Neil Lanctot explores the Negro baseball leagues beginning in the 1920s until their eventual collapse in the 1960s. Exceedingly well researched, Lanctot’s book probes the sport’s racial history on an almost season-by-season timeline and carefully shows what led to the league’s eventual demise.

I recently saw the film, 42, and I found many connections with our Sociology of Sport class. First and foremost, the movie was about the baseball legend, Jackie Robinson. Jack broke the baseball color barrier and was the first African American player allowed in Major League Baseball. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers beginning in 1947. Jack was a strong, talented player, but he also had a mind of his own. He played with an attitude that would be taunting to other players. When he made it to the Montreal Royals in 1946, he had to quickly get rid of this taunting, smart attitude. He was the only black player in a time of hatred and prejudice in the United States. Although he

“Basketball was once a game for the Irish and Italian Catholics in Rockaway and the Jewish on Fordham Road in the Bronx.” (Greenfield 210). Back in the beginnings of basketball ethnic names like Red Holzmans, Red Auerbach, and the McGuire Brothers were etched as stars of the NBA (Greenfield 210). But in the present names such Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson are a fixture of pro basketball with national television exposure and million dollar salaries. This is a far cry from the old school basketball of white men with status playing it for leisure. Greenfield and Wolf believe there is a question of style with today’s modern player.

During the 80’s, the period of which these individuals played, the NBA desperately needed a new spark, and the NBA got just what it needed. Larry Bird’s Celtics during the 1979-80 season made a dramatic improvement “from a 29-53 record the year before to 61-21”(Magic Johnson and). While Bird is making an extraordinary turnaround for his Boston Celtics, Magic Johnson, during his rookie season, won a NBA championship for the Los Angeles Lakers. This was the Los Angeles Lakers seventh NBA championship victory. Their success helped the NBA, but their identities off the court supersedes the game of basketball. The years previous to the Magic-Bird rivalry were ever changing. The NBA changed from a fundamental, half-court game with all-white players, to a quick pace, athletically acrobatic game with mainly black players. Few old-school former white people, such as Jerry West and Pete Maravich, could participate and compete in this new form of basketball. This different style of basketball significantly swayed many viewers, white fans, from attending the NBA games. White fans felt that the game was very egocentric and didn’t involve all the players. Also, the white fans didn’t