Lawyer updates book on ‘39 baseball
Can you imagine Major League Baseball players from different teams joining to play games during the offseason to make extra money and show off their skills?
That practice known as “barnstorming” was common during the initial decades of the 20th Century.
It also had the unintended consequence of helping steer MLB toward racial integration, professional baseball’s most significant development.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the barnstorming teams often were racially integrated with MLB and Negro League players, or white teams played against Black teams. That led to acceptance of Black players by some white players and eventually helped facilitate MLB’s integration starting with Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
That’s according to Lawrence Katz, a Warren-based attorney and author of the book, “The Summer of Change. Baseball in 1939,” renamed from its original title, “Baseball in 1939. The Watershed Season of a National Pastime.”
“The ice was starting to break in 1939,” Katz said. “In the 1920s, it was taken as given that segregation was seen as natural. But by 1939, there was much discussion about it. That began to change things and how things were perceived. The existing order was being questioned. It laid the groundwork at that time” for desegregation.
Some players continued to oppose desegregation of baseball, while others supported it and many were ambivalent, “somewhere in the middle,” Katz said.
Cleveland Indians Hall of Famer Bob Feller, whose opinion carried weight, “spoke positively about the quality and character” of Black players and supported their right to play in MLB, he said.
Katz’s nonfiction account of the 1939 MLB season will be subject of a Macomb Bar Foundation Book Club online gathering 7 p.m. Monday, three days before the opening of the MLB season, held over Zoom. The meeting ID is 846 9328 5079, and the passcode is 831140.
Katz, who resides in West Bloomfield Township, started writing the book in 1988 and it was published by McFarland & Company in 1995 as “Baseball in 1939.”
The book was reissued in 2012, and Katz, who retained e-book rights, selfpublished an updated electronic version last August, with hard copies available, with the new title.
“The new version “has a new cover and more pictures and was rewritten to cover events since that time to 2020,” he said.
The book includes interviews with Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell and 13 former players including Feller, Indians pitcher Mel Harder, Detroit Tigers players Charlie Gehringer and Johnny Vandermeer and Negro Leaguer Monte Irvin.
Katz is a lifelong baseball fan and wrote baseball articles for magazines such as Sports Collectors Digest, Baseball Research Journal an Primo Magazine, and wrote a chapter for “The Perfect Game,” published by Taylor Publishing Co. and Barnes and Noble in 1993.
Katz took advantage of extra time on his hands during the COVID-19 pandemic last year to update the work.
“I relived that same experience (of writing the book) again,” he said. “It was an amazing experience.”
“All of the heroes of this book have now passed, but their voices continue to speak loudly about the events then and now,” he said. “Major League Baseball mirrored America at that time and still mirrors America today.”
Katz said 1939 also was significant for other reasons.
It was the opening of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., featuring the induction of greats such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. It was the labeled the centennial anniversary of baseball, although he said that was based on the dubious assumption by the Mills Commission the game was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown.
Katz and other baseball historians agree baseball’s origins go back even further to old British games and were called Town Ball, One Old Cat and Rounders.
That year also was important as it featured the first televised game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
“It bred the television stars of the 1940s and 1950s,” he said.
Night games, which began in 1935, were still a novelty. The Indians’ first night game was played against the Tigers at Municipal Stadium in June 1939 at which Feller defeated all-star Bobo Newsom
5-0 and struck out Hank Greenberg three times, Katz said. Indians retired Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie, whose first name at one time was the Cleveland team’s nickname, attended the game.
It was baseball great Lou Gehrig’s last year, and included his famous retirement speech, and Ted Williams’ first year, their two careers spanning 1923 to 1960.
“It was a glimpse into the past and a glimpse into the future,” he said.
Outside of baseball, the year also carried significance as the United States was coming out of the Depression and entering the prelude to World War II. The World’s Fair was held that year in New York.
Regarding Harwell, Katz said he provided support and input, including details Detroit Tigers barnstorming in Michigan led by player Harry Heilmann.
“He was as nice a man as everyone hears about,” Katz said of Harwell, saying he talked to him several times.
Katz’s primary focus as an attorney is criminal appeals.