PSA for the PBBC, March 24

Headnote: One of the thing I like about the Pandemic Baseball Book Club is that it’s a kind of “one stop shopping.” Instead of posting about various authors, projects, and events, all I’m doing here is cutting and pasting their weekly newsletter. Here’s today’s. Enjoy.

By the way, my review of Devin Gordon’s book on the Mets is now available on Bookreporter.com. Look for a “Bookshelf Conversation” with the author next week. Here are Conversations I’ve had with some of the authors associated with the PBBC:

• John Shea
• Joan Ryan
• Jason Turbow
• Anika Orrock
• Brad Balukjian
• Dan Schlossberg

Visit the PBBC for the latest batch of authors with new books coming out this year.

Yesterday was publication day for Frank Guridy’s The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics. Frank is an associate professor of history and African American and African diaspora studies at Columbia University. Dude is smart. So what business does a guy who’s not only an NYC professor but an NYC native have writing a book about Texas? Well, he spent a dozen years teaching at The University of Texas at Austin, for one. Also, he knows a valuable story when he sees it.

Head to the PBBC website to check out video of his conversation about The Sports Revolution with Dan Epstein (author of the upcoming Captain and Me). If you’d rather partake via earbuds, listen in on the PBBC podcast feed.

ASK AN AUTHOR
Frank Andre Guridy
The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (University of Texas Press, March 23, 2021)

What is your book about?
The Sports Revolution tells the story of Texas’s impact on American sporting culture during the 1960s and 70s, a period when Texas and the rest of the country was transformed by the civil rights and feminist movements. It shows how an alliance between sports entrepreneurs and athletes from marginalized backgrounds contributed to the exploding popularity and profitability of pro and college sports, and gave them added social significance. It also shows that these advancements were ultimately derailed by hyper-commodification, which led to the rise of a new sport management class controlled by white men. If we want to understand the persistence of racial, gender and class hierarchies, we have to revisit the 1960s and 70s—the period when the terms of inclusion were first established.

Why this book? Why now?
We are living through a moment when the debate around sports, politics and social justice has shifted, due in large part to the resurgence of athlete activism inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Athletes, both professional and collegiate, are less afraid to speak out against injustice. My book revisits the activism of the 1960s and ’70s, when athletes first rejected the idea that they should “stick to sports.”

In the era after color barriers were broken in Major League Baseball, pro basketball and pro football, and when they were still being broken in college football, the very appearance of these athletes in previously prohibited spaces increased their social significance and changed American society. Today’s struggle for social justice both inside and outside the sports world influenced the topics I wound up exploring in the book.

What surprised you?
The prominence of Texans, from entrepreneurs to athletes, in the American sporting landscape from the 1960s to the 1980s. You cannot truly know the history of the expansion of Major League Baseball, the NFL and the ABA/NBA during that period without understanding the entrepreneurship of Roy Hofheinz, Bob Smith, Lamar Hunt, Clint Murchison and Angelo Drossos. You cannot understand the transformation of stadium construction without knowing the impact of the Houston Astrodome and Texas Stadium. You cannot understand the importation of professional sports to Texas without accounting for the abundant talents of local athletes, both native-born (Earl Campbell, Jerry LeVias) and those who ended up there (Ferguson Jenkins, George Gervin). The Sports Revolution gives these characters a historical context, showing how their careers were shaped by the larger political, economic and cultural forces that formed them.

Who influenced this book?
Scholars and historians who show how sport can be a lens to help us understand ourselves as citizens—men, women, Black, white, etc. Works like Adrian Burgos Jr.’s Playing America’s Game, Laurent DuBois’s Soccer Empire, Brenda Elsey and Josh Nadel’s Futbolera, and Michael Oriard’s Bowled Over, among others, have illustrated how sport is much more than mere entertainment. My book was also heavily influenced by the sportswriting styles of David Halberstam and Howard Bryant—especially Halberstam’s October 1964, and his classic Breaks of the Game, along with Bryant’s Shut Out. I love the way both writers dig deep into the details of a small story to say something big about American history and society.

How long did the book take?
Too long! I agreed to write it in 2013, but day-to-day work as a professor slowed my progress. I am extremely lucky to have a job that allows me to teach and write books in this pandemic age, and was able to use a semester-long sabbatical—and sacrifice a lot of sleep—between January 2018 and January 2020.

Was there anything you felt was extremely difficult to cut? What was it, and why?
I had a lot more to say about the Astros—especially the experiences of Jimmy Wynn, Joe Morgan, Cesar Cedeño, José Cruz and J.R. Richard—as well as the Houston Oilers during the Bum Phillips era. I could have written a book about Houston’s sports history alone, but because The Sports Revolution is about multiple sports statewide, I had to cut a lot of that material.

How did this process differ from your other books? 
This was my first book for a non-academic readership. It was also my first sports book. This made the writing process both rewarding and extremely challenging. Scholars are often trained to rely too much on academic jargon to get their points across, because their primary audience is fellow academics. I had to unlearn that longstanding practice because I really want to reach a broader readership. I made a concerted effort to make my points through the stories I tell. The Sports Revolution is my first attempt to master this craft; hopefully it won’t be my last.

Much of the fun was in the research. I confess to being an archive rat. I did traditional archival work that historians typically do by consulting materials in various archives in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, but the best part was investigating the vast and growing archive of sports videos that are all over the internet. Enthusiasts post old telecasts, highlight films and interviews every day, so I no longer have to solely rely on box scores and game summaries. Football videos are plentiful, probably because the NFL devoted more resources to documenting itself than Major League Baseball. Still, baseball on the radio has a deep history, which I particularly enjoyed while listening to the radio broadcast of David Clyde’s major league debut in 1973 on YouTube. The Southern Methodist University Library posts videos from the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, which has news clips from WFAA TV in Dallas. There, you can find random interviews with athletes and coaches, and even brief game footage and stories told by Verne Lundquist (and Bill O’Reilly!) when they worked for the station in the 1970s.

One of my favorite clips is of Lenny Randle setting off a nasty brawl when he took out Cleveland Indians pitcher Milt Wilcox, who was trying to beat out a bunt during a game in 1974. That incident helped fuel the tensions that led to the infamous Ten Cent Beer Night game in Cleveland a week later.

Watching and listening to these old games is a blast. More importantly, they allow sport historians like me to reconstruct the game-day environment: the sounds of the crowd, the work of the broadcasters, and the craft and skill of the athletes.

Buy The Sports Revolution here.

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MORE GREAT STUFF AT BASEBALL PROSPECTUS
The past week has seen two more PBBC authors enjoying excerpts at Baseball Prospectus. Last week it was Jeremy Beer, whose Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player won all the awards last year (SABR’s Seymour Medal, Spitball Magazine’s CASEY Award, the Robert Peterson Award from SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee). Head to BP to read a passage about the decline of Black baseball after Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues. Oscar Charleston comes out in paperback on April 1.

This week saw BP excerpt Jared Diamond‘s Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Home Run Revolution, focusing on the advent of the launch-angle phenomenon across Major League Baseball. Swing Kings came out in paperback yesterday.

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NEW-LOOK VIDEOS
If you’ve noticed the new graphics in front of PBBC’s interview videos, you can thank Clubbie author Greg Larson, who’s been diving in, edits blazing, to pull together intro graphics and SEO-friendly copy for our YouTube fare. We are deeply appreciative of his multimedia talents.

Now go buy Greg’s book.

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BIG SALE
Speaking of Greg’s book, here’s a reminder that next week, starting April 1, the e-version will be available from the University of Nebraska for $1. In addition, the hard copy of every UN baseball title (including Clubbie) is currently available for 40 percent off, directly from the publisher.

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WHAT ELSE WE’VE BEEN DOING

Ever wonder why baseball shirts have three-quarter sleeves? It’s on account of a early-century pitcher named Elroy “Short Arms” Howard, whose team-issued undershirts always seemed to be too long. As it happened, Howard’s father-in-law was Albert Champion, whose sporting goods company designed a one-off shirt that suited his measurements, which quickly caught on across the Federal League. Before anybody knew what was happening it was in widespread production and history was made. Did we invent every one of the above details? Maybe. Can you buy a PBBC-branded, three-quarter sleeve baseball shirt at our website? Absolutely. Get stepping.

Tagged as: Pandemic Baseball Book Club