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The
Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues
James A. Riley
This landmark reference volume (James
A. Riley, Carroll & Graf, 1994, updated version
publishing in January, 2002) 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, 2002 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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