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Sport and Society
Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh
Examines the influence of amateur and professional sports on Pittsburgh's Black community from the 1920s to the 1950s and discusses boxing, baseball, basketball, and football
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1986
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About the author
Rob Ruck
10 books5 followersRob Ruck teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Author of Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh and The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic, his documentary work includes the Emmy Award–winning Kings on the Hill: Baseball’s Forgotten Men. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Maggie Patterson, his coauthor for Rooney: A Sporting Life.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 3, 2019
Rob Ruck Sandlots Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh.
I’m not a sports fan, so much of the details in this book are lost on me. If one is familiar with the Negro leagues and the players, it is wonderful accounting of changes not only in Pittsburgh, but the east coast, as there were many Negro teams that played each other and also played White teams. As the home of two major teams, Pittsburgh is the center. However, Ruck tells an amazing story about a city, its neighborhoods and the role of sandlot and community sports team during an era when the industry was not dominated by the media, radio and then television, now I guess streaming.
In my research on the Pittsburgh community that my grandparents and my mother lived, I can better understand their experiences. My grandfather, born in 1903, was big into sports, playing I think football as a young man and into his early adult years. His connection with Art Rooney dates back to those early days. In a city that was less segregated than it became in the 1950s, when the percentage of the White population declined and the Black community increased—also more economic challenges there was more crossing of racial line. In my grandfather’s days, integration was the nature of his neighborhood and sports. I’m not clear on the schooling experience, but he did finish high school. He had friends in the White community, as well as the Black community and his church. I remember in the 1960s, that he worked with a mixed-race Boy Scout troop.
In the days where transportation was rough, coming out to see a community game on the sandlots or informal ball fields was common. These men enjoyed playing and there were more opportunities to play over a life time. The whole landscape has changed. Early in the 20th century, neighborhoods were more integrated and while the Black community was a part of the Hill District, they shared the space with other groups. Teams in Homestead, Terrace Village, 18th Ward, Garfield, and other segments of the city supported their teams, including fund raising events in the off season. These men held regular jobs and played evenings and weekends.
In fact, during the depression, when there was little work, men played even more and provided entertainment for needy communities. These informal groups were likely to reflect the community, but often people joined teams in neighboring communities because of the strength of the players. Not part of the established major White leagues, members of the Black community support their own teams.
There is a push to professionalize teams. Gus Greenlee is a force behind the Crawfords, but he is also linked into the politics to protect his number running. Cum Posey is behind the Homestead Grays. They compete with each other in many ways. However, they battle with the larger racism in sports, as bookings, renting fields, were obstacles. The poverty of the Black community also meant that the gate donations were low, but the Black teams often did better when they played White team in neighborhoods that had more money.
Much of the book is about the institutional changes in sports, as Negro leagues do provide the support for Black players, but in the late 1940s, when baseball integrates, they failed because now people can see Jackie Robinson. As Black players sign with farm teams and the major leagues, there is no compensation to the Negro leagues that had supported them for decades. Baseball reorganizes into farm teams that feed the major leagues, but what we lost was community baseball, where people could remain active for much of their lives. Now competitive sports is a narrow mobility channel out of the poverty of the Black community that everyone hopes for and few achieve.
Born in 1948 and growing up in New York City, sports was never a huge part of my life. When I moved to Memphis in the 1983, I could see adults playing soft ball on fields. The city operated lighted fields and there were three games on each field weeknights. There were seasons for different sports. Teams were linked to work, taverns, community, churches and other organizations. I was amazed, but reading this book I can see how this pattern was common earlier in the century and some cities support such efforts. I recalled team playing soccer and baseball in Riverside Park, but there were often immigrants. Now we have sports more like to schools, colleges, and of course those informal community leagues. Yet, only some cities support semi-pro programs. In fact, in effort to cut costs, some public school eliminate their sports teams. So this arena of life is very much shaped by social class.
Rob Ruck also has a counter narrative on Branch Rickey, who is celebrated, but integrating the major leagues meant more revenues for his team and later television contracts.
Integration is not the only source of changing the landscape. Changes also come with the radio and television, as people no longer go out to actually watch teams. Ruck cover major changes, but I know that is a book in itself. I knew little about the inside world of basketball. Reading John Matthew Smith’s The Sons of Westwood taught me a lot about the expansion of higher education in CA and also how the political events of the era played out on the basketball court. John Wooden was a complex fellow caught up in the many changes of the society. He was the coach, but there was much happening off the courts that move basketball into a new industry for higher education.
Ruck is also painting a complex picture of the changes from an era when Black people had control over the sports in their own community. Now it is another site of capitalism delivering to owners and shareholders. We can also link it with health issues, as now people are more likely to watch sports on some screen than get up and play.
I’m not a sports fan, so much of the details in this book are lost on me. If one is familiar with the Negro leagues and the players, it is wonderful accounting of changes not only in Pittsburgh, but the east coast, as there were many Negro teams that played each other and also played White teams. As the home of two major teams, Pittsburgh is the center. However, Ruck tells an amazing story about a city, its neighborhoods and the role of sandlot and community sports team during an era when the industry was not dominated by the media, radio and then television, now I guess streaming.
In my research on the Pittsburgh community that my grandparents and my mother lived, I can better understand their experiences. My grandfather, born in 1903, was big into sports, playing I think football as a young man and into his early adult years. His connection with Art Rooney dates back to those early days. In a city that was less segregated than it became in the 1950s, when the percentage of the White population declined and the Black community increased—also more economic challenges there was more crossing of racial line. In my grandfather’s days, integration was the nature of his neighborhood and sports. I’m not clear on the schooling experience, but he did finish high school. He had friends in the White community, as well as the Black community and his church. I remember in the 1960s, that he worked with a mixed-race Boy Scout troop.
In the days where transportation was rough, coming out to see a community game on the sandlots or informal ball fields was common. These men enjoyed playing and there were more opportunities to play over a life time. The whole landscape has changed. Early in the 20th century, neighborhoods were more integrated and while the Black community was a part of the Hill District, they shared the space with other groups. Teams in Homestead, Terrace Village, 18th Ward, Garfield, and other segments of the city supported their teams, including fund raising events in the off season. These men held regular jobs and played evenings and weekends.
In fact, during the depression, when there was little work, men played even more and provided entertainment for needy communities. These informal groups were likely to reflect the community, but often people joined teams in neighboring communities because of the strength of the players. Not part of the established major White leagues, members of the Black community support their own teams.
There is a push to professionalize teams. Gus Greenlee is a force behind the Crawfords, but he is also linked into the politics to protect his number running. Cum Posey is behind the Homestead Grays. They compete with each other in many ways. However, they battle with the larger racism in sports, as bookings, renting fields, were obstacles. The poverty of the Black community also meant that the gate donations were low, but the Black teams often did better when they played White team in neighborhoods that had more money.
Much of the book is about the institutional changes in sports, as Negro leagues do provide the support for Black players, but in the late 1940s, when baseball integrates, they failed because now people can see Jackie Robinson. As Black players sign with farm teams and the major leagues, there is no compensation to the Negro leagues that had supported them for decades. Baseball reorganizes into farm teams that feed the major leagues, but what we lost was community baseball, where people could remain active for much of their lives. Now competitive sports is a narrow mobility channel out of the poverty of the Black community that everyone hopes for and few achieve.
Born in 1948 and growing up in New York City, sports was never a huge part of my life. When I moved to Memphis in the 1983, I could see adults playing soft ball on fields. The city operated lighted fields and there were three games on each field weeknights. There were seasons for different sports. Teams were linked to work, taverns, community, churches and other organizations. I was amazed, but reading this book I can see how this pattern was common earlier in the century and some cities support such efforts. I recalled team playing soccer and baseball in Riverside Park, but there were often immigrants. Now we have sports more like to schools, colleges, and of course those informal community leagues. Yet, only some cities support semi-pro programs. In fact, in effort to cut costs, some public school eliminate their sports teams. So this arena of life is very much shaped by social class.
Rob Ruck also has a counter narrative on Branch Rickey, who is celebrated, but integrating the major leagues meant more revenues for his team and later television contracts.
Integration is not the only source of changing the landscape. Changes also come with the radio and television, as people no longer go out to actually watch teams. Ruck cover major changes, but I know that is a book in itself. I knew little about the inside world of basketball. Reading John Matthew Smith’s The Sons of Westwood taught me a lot about the expansion of higher education in CA and also how the political events of the era played out on the basketball court. John Wooden was a complex fellow caught up in the many changes of the society. He was the coach, but there was much happening off the courts that move basketball into a new industry for higher education.
Ruck is also painting a complex picture of the changes from an era when Black people had control over the sports in their own community. Now it is another site of capitalism delivering to owners and shareholders. We can also link it with health issues, as now people are more likely to watch sports on some screen than get up and play.
August 15, 2024
A phenomenal book that is of course informative if you’re a baseball fan. I think also carries a lot of value if you want to learn more about Pittsburgh and the history of the black community here and in other places around the country.
The most interesting part of the book was learning how sports helped the growing black community become a *real* community. Through hard work, dedication and passion, people built their own community and culture when shut out from those aspects of life due to de facto segregation.
And having that sports community wasn’t even all about just community and recreation. It also gave people jobs, in the days when locally sponsored teams would give people full time jobs in addition to playing baseball. This grassroots local baseball gave people jobs, recreation, community and so much more. And they built it themselves.
This seems like kind of a forgotten aspect of history, and even as someone who knows a good deal about Negro League baseball, I still didn’t know about the even more local teams and the impact sports had on the growing black population. There’s a lot of important history here.
The most interesting part of the book was learning how sports helped the growing black community become a *real* community. Through hard work, dedication and passion, people built their own community and culture when shut out from those aspects of life due to de facto segregation.
And having that sports community wasn’t even all about just community and recreation. It also gave people jobs, in the days when locally sponsored teams would give people full time jobs in addition to playing baseball. This grassroots local baseball gave people jobs, recreation, community and so much more. And they built it themselves.
This seems like kind of a forgotten aspect of history, and even as someone who knows a good deal about Negro League baseball, I still didn’t know about the even more local teams and the impact sports had on the growing black population. There’s a lot of important history here.
August 7, 2020
This book looked to the bottom up development of black baseball in segregated Pittsburgh from the 1910s-40s. Ruck originally wrote this work as his doctoral dissertation and it contained many of the ideas he develops further in future books that came out in his long scholarly works later. Ruck's argument is that black baseball teams developed over a few decades as sandlot teams, in which neighborhoods would field teams that mostly were unpaid but just played for the fun of the game as entertainment. Before television and suburbanization, the sandlot team was the best option for fun. Furthermore, the elite professional teams that did arise in the Negro Leagues were fueled by interplay with sandlot teams, where players switched back and forth between pros and sandlot. If a player flunked out of professional ranks of the often unstable Negro Leagues teams, they would end up right back on sandlot teams.
Ruck traced the development of various squads and what they meant for the black community as far as developing relationships and how the larger community responded. Interestingly, they weren't strictly segregated in the way that Pittsburgh wasn't strictly segregated, meaning often a few white players ended up playing on sandlot teams in the same way that there was a some whites (especially "ethnic" whites) who lived in majority black neighborhoods. That differs from the legal Jim Crowism of the South, even if in effect it was much the same, and certainly not as intense as post-war redlining and white flight made residential segregation in Pittsburgh (and much of the United States.) He noted that neighborhood sandlot teams were what people turned out to see, much more than the Pirates, who often blocked radio broadcasts.
Ruck than demonstrated how those sandlot teams of black Pittsburgh would field the dominant and famous Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, with their owners in Cum Posey and Gus Greenlee. That story has been better narrated, but at the time, it was newer work. Still, Ruck narrates how often even in the rivalry which pushed local sandlotters off the team in order to better capture dominant play (a process that had occured in mainly white baseball back in the 1860s-70s), these sandlotters still made up much of the popularity of baseball. Black baseball was such a wide institution that was dramatically destroyed in the integration years as well as the general destruction of grassroots baseball that took away most of the amateur, semi-pro, and the majority of minor league teams and transformed the fan experience into listening and watching baseball instead of participating in it. While Ruck mostly focused on the deep institution of black baseball in Pittsburgh, the methods he used could easily be transformed to all sorts of grassroots baseball at the time, and indeed, he had an advantage of being able to talk to many of the former participants who unfortunately have mostly died by this point. He develops many of the themes laid out in this book later in further books on Pittsburgh figures, international racial implications of baseball, and beyond.
Ruck traced the development of various squads and what they meant for the black community as far as developing relationships and how the larger community responded. Interestingly, they weren't strictly segregated in the way that Pittsburgh wasn't strictly segregated, meaning often a few white players ended up playing on sandlot teams in the same way that there was a some whites (especially "ethnic" whites) who lived in majority black neighborhoods. That differs from the legal Jim Crowism of the South, even if in effect it was much the same, and certainly not as intense as post-war redlining and white flight made residential segregation in Pittsburgh (and much of the United States.) He noted that neighborhood sandlot teams were what people turned out to see, much more than the Pirates, who often blocked radio broadcasts.
Ruck than demonstrated how those sandlot teams of black Pittsburgh would field the dominant and famous Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, with their owners in Cum Posey and Gus Greenlee. That story has been better narrated, but at the time, it was newer work. Still, Ruck narrates how often even in the rivalry which pushed local sandlotters off the team in order to better capture dominant play (a process that had occured in mainly white baseball back in the 1860s-70s), these sandlotters still made up much of the popularity of baseball. Black baseball was such a wide institution that was dramatically destroyed in the integration years as well as the general destruction of grassroots baseball that took away most of the amateur, semi-pro, and the majority of minor league teams and transformed the fan experience into listening and watching baseball instead of participating in it. While Ruck mostly focused on the deep institution of black baseball in Pittsburgh, the methods he used could easily be transformed to all sorts of grassroots baseball at the time, and indeed, he had an advantage of being able to talk to many of the former participants who unfortunately have mostly died by this point. He develops many of the themes laid out in this book later in further books on Pittsburgh figures, international racial implications of baseball, and beyond.
December 24, 2018
A crucial social history that encompasses both baseball's famed Negro Leagues and even-more-grassroots community sports in black Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh-based sports historian and academic tracked down many of the participants in those early- and mid-20th-century ventures while they were still with us, and it pays off with a thoughtful consideration of how African-Americans in one (then-big, now-medium-sized) city put sport to use when they were barred from participating in the games the majority culture played. (It's mostly about baseball, though football gets some attention.) The writing is dry at times, given the charismatic personalities at play, but this is well worth it for aficionados of sport and culture. Also includes an authoritative explanation of how the numbers racket worked in Pittsburgh.
July 3, 2021
Being a fan of baseball history, especially Pittsburgh and Negro League history this was a must read. Professor Ruck is the giant who's shoulders we stand on when it comes to researching the Negro Leagues in Pittsburgh. His work has inspired mine and I am forever grateful.
This book will appeal to many different groups, those that want to learn more about the Negro Leagues, those that love baseball history in general, and those that love Pittsburgh history. I fall into all three.
I don't keep many books nowadays but this one has a permanent place on my bookshelf. I am going to read Professor Ruck's book "The Tropic of Baseball" next.
This book will appeal to many different groups, those that want to learn more about the Negro Leagues, those that love baseball history in general, and those that love Pittsburgh history. I fall into all three.
I don't keep many books nowadays but this one has a permanent place on my bookshelf. I am going to read Professor Ruck's book "The Tropic of Baseball" next.
May 6, 2022
Outstanding book, documenting the tremendous history of Black Sandlot Baseball in Pittsburgh. Stories about my grandfather's, who were Negro League stars, written in beautiful detail.
May 10, 2014
This review is from: Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (Sport and Society) (Paperback)
I grew up in Pittsburgh,and as a "Knuckleballer," pitched in the "Greater Pittsburgh League" for "The Terrace Village Baseball Club" during the early 50s. Played with, against and was managed by all the characters mention in the book. Knew the owners of the "Homestead Grays" and "Pittsburgh Crawfords." In addition grew up in the "Numbers Business." The history portrayed in "The Sandlot Seasons: Sports in Black Pittsburgh" I can attest to, since I spent a lot of time involved. The book's portrayal of Homestead and Pittsburgh's Hill District Black society as a driving force would probably make a good movie or TV sequels, since no story of this type has ever been portrayed. Men like Cum Posey, "Sonny-man" Jackson, "Gus" Greenlee, Wyatt Turner, Harold Tinker, Bill Nunn, Jr., Mal Goode, Bill Berry, Ocie Swain, Alvin Clark and others are remembered for their contribution to the "Black Baseball Society" in Pittsburgh and truly portrayed in this work. The history is an excellent portrayal of Homestead/Pittsburgh and it's prime movers during that period. Professor Rob Ruck has done history a great service in rendering this work. A recommended purchase for those history students, buffs and those Pittsburghers that want to remember "when," to purchase and provide a legacy for their siblings...I have.
I grew up in Pittsburgh,and as a "Knuckleballer," pitched in the "Greater Pittsburgh League" for "The Terrace Village Baseball Club" during the early 50s. Played with, against and was managed by all the characters mention in the book. Knew the owners of the "Homestead Grays" and "Pittsburgh Crawfords." In addition grew up in the "Numbers Business." The history portrayed in "The Sandlot Seasons: Sports in Black Pittsburgh" I can attest to, since I spent a lot of time involved. The book's portrayal of Homestead and Pittsburgh's Hill District Black society as a driving force would probably make a good movie or TV sequels, since no story of this type has ever been portrayed. Men like Cum Posey, "Sonny-man" Jackson, "Gus" Greenlee, Wyatt Turner, Harold Tinker, Bill Nunn, Jr., Mal Goode, Bill Berry, Ocie Swain, Alvin Clark and others are remembered for their contribution to the "Black Baseball Society" in Pittsburgh and truly portrayed in this work. The history is an excellent portrayal of Homestead/Pittsburgh and it's prime movers during that period. Professor Rob Ruck has done history a great service in rendering this work. A recommended purchase for those history students, buffs and those Pittsburghers that want to remember "when," to purchase and provide a legacy for their siblings...I have.
March 23, 2010
Going from dissertation to book is never easy, but Sandlot Seasons makes the transition better than most works of its kind. A lot of the material will seem like a review to any scholar who is familiar with Pittsburgh history, but Ruck's original research on sandlot sports participation is quite interesting. The sections on professional African-American spots seem to be based largely on secondary works such as Peterson's Only the Ball was White, but they're still engaging and competently written. I've heard that Ruck's The Tropic of Baseball is more engaging than SS, and I look forward to reading it.
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