When I was a kid, younger than 10, it was a different world. Kids walked everywhere by themselves. To school, to the library, to play with friends. When I lived in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood, there was a great used book store a couple of blocks away from our apartment where I would often spend my 50 cents allowance, splitting between baseball stuff and comic books.
Came across these purchases recently. Maybe I paid a quarter each. It didn’t strike me as strange to find yearbooks from Chicago in Brooklyn; I also bought, at other times, similar publications from the Dodgers and Cardinals.
The White Sox books were not published as the standard magazine-like yearbook. Instead they were more akin to paperbacks. And as far as I could tell, no other teams identified their personnel in such personal detail. For example, on Tommie Agee’s page in the 1966 edition, we find the following:
Born in Magnolia, Alabama, on August 9, 1942. Bats and throws right handed. Height: 5’11”, Weight: 195 lbs. Brown eyes and black hair. Single. Negro ancestry. Winter home: Mobile, Alabama.
The rest of the team’s African-American players were similarly ID’d. Most — but not all — of the Caucasian players were also noted for their heritage: Scotch-Irish (Danny Cater). German-Irish-Dutch (Ken Berry). Canadian (Pete Ward). Danish (Ron Hansen). I wonder how they might have listed any Jewish players? Married players were also ID’d, as well as the mention of the number and gender of their kids.
Can you imagine this today?
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