The
Biographical Encyclopedia
of the Negro Baseball Leagues
This landmark reference
volume (James A. Riley, Carroll
& Graf, 1994) is recognized as the most
comprehensive work chronicling this era of
baseball history.
Review
"...a must for any serious baseball
library."------The Wall Street
Journal
"...a comprehensive reference book...a
valuable compilation...provides illustrations,
team histories, an appendix on players, plus an
exhaustive bibliography."-------Library
Journal
"...great fun to thumb through...Riley
has spent much of the last 20 years researching
black baseball, interviewing over 120 veterans of
the Negro Leagues, combing obscure books,
magazines, pamphlets and black newspapers to
assemble the most complete roster of players and
teams ever compiled in this field."-------Book
World
"...a marvelous job of inteviewing
these men and gathering data from an amazing
array of historical nooks and crannies...a true
magnum opus."------The Sporting News
"New Negro Leagues Encyclopedia is
awesome"------Sports Collectors
Digest
"When Jackie
Robinson walked on the field in a Brooklyn Dodger
uniform on opening day of the 1947 season, the
exodus of black Americans from the Negro Leagues
was immediate and irreversible. The defection was
also destructive, and the demise of black
baseball was rapid and inevitable. For almost a
quarter of a century the history of the parallel
world of black baseball was virtually forgotten
and in danger of being lost."
"Like most
Americans, my first introduction to this segment
of baseball history came from Bob Peterson's
excellent book Only the Ball
Was White. But after my
appetite was whetted for more information, I
found that there were no other books on the
subject. At first my interest and research were
on a personal level, but gradually, as I realized
the dearth of information available on the
subject, I began to expand the perimeters of my
research to encompass a goal of preserving a
complete and accurate history of the Negro
Leagues, with a special interest on the men who
were destined to spend their careers in the
shadows of relative obscurity."
"My efforts to
achieve this goal assumed a dual approach.
Foremost, I considered it imperative to contact
living players from the Negro Leagues to secure
both personal histories and evaluations of their
deceased contemporaries who had passed away
without leaving an account of their own baseball
memories. As I traveled across the country
speaking with these men, I was encouraged by
their caring and sharing attitude and by their
genuine appreciation of finally being remembered
for their contributions to baseball."
"Also essential to
learning more about the men who played in the
sundown shadows of the Negro Leagues was
utilization of archival resources for
contemporary accounts of games and events from
this segment of baseball history. Countless hours
spent in studied analysis of microfilms of black
newspapers from the era produced additional
information that contributed to a more complete
understanding of the special spirit of black
baseball that made it truly a unique piece of
Americana."
"In rediscovery of
this spirit, other publications have maintained a
broader perspective and presented an overview of
black baseball, or focused on sociological
conditions that contributed to the existence of
the Negro Leagues."
"Individual
players, with the exception of a select number of
stars, have been neglected and remain unknown to
the American sports world. Previously, no source
existed for an interested reader to learn about
these forgotten specters from the shadows of the
past. In filling this void, The
Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball
Leagues stands as a landmark
publication."
Adapted from The
Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball
Leagues by James A. Riley,
COPYRIGHT 1994 by Carroll & Graf. All rights
reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any
form without written permission from the
publisher.
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