Negro League Baseball Quotes

“As LaGuardia himself explained to an End Jim Crow in Baseball Committee official, a demonstration might be counterproductive “if it provokes disorder” and would ultimately “retard the solution of the problem.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“Moreover, throughout its existence, most observers perceived the USL as a “Branch Rickey controlled league,” an assertion unsubstantiated by existing evidence.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“Perhaps Rickey best summed up his motives in a later statement: “I did not employ a Negro because he was a Negro, nor did I have in mind at all doing something for the Negro race, or even bringing up that issue. I simply wanted to win a pennant for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and I wanted the best human beings I could find to help me win it.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“Perhaps more important, Rickey alluded to the potential effect of the soon to be enacted state law, admitting that the legislation “has teeth in it and I don’t know just what will happen.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“On Friday, April 6, Bostic and two other journalists escorted Thomas and McDuffie to Bear Mountain. Startled Dodgers officials immediately refused to grant a tryout, claiming it could not be fitted into the day’s activities. While team president-general manager Branch Rickey invited the group to lunch, he angrily berated Bostic for his confrontational approach”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“You keep on blowing off about getting us players in the league without thinking about our end of it . . . without thinking how tough it’s gonna be for a colored ball player to come out of the club house and have all the white guys calling him ‘n———r’ and ‘b———k so-and-so.’ . . . What I want to know is what the hell’s gonna happen to good will when one of those colored players, goaded out of his senses by repeated insults, takes a bat and busts fellowship in his damned head?”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“While Roosevelt himself expressed a desire that “night games . . . be extended because it gives the opportunity to the day shift to see a game occasionally.” subsequent “dimout” orders threatened continued night baseball at semipro, minor, and major league parks located in coastal cities.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“Posey, for example, claimed that the players “were almost prisoners when not practicing or playing. They were not permitted to buy a glass of beer in a saloon. They were not permitted out of the hotel after dark on any night except Sunday and Monday nights.” Paige himself largely confirmed Posey’s charges, later admitting that “I wasn’t down there very long until I wished I wasn’t.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

“The eleven chapters are primarily structured chronologically, tracing the three distinct phases of the industry’s growth: failure (1933–1940), success (1941–1946), and irrelevance (1947–1960s), with close attention to larger contextual developments shaping each period.”
― Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution