1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever
Madden, veteran New York Daily News baseball writer and inductee into the writers’ section of the Baseball Hall of Fame, attempts here to do the sport and readers a service beyond the lines of the diamond. He dates the true and full integration of baseball, despite Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947, to 1954, not unrelatedly the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision. African Americans Willie Mays and Larry Doby brought their respective teams (the Giants and Indians) to the World Series that year, and Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks, among others, were beginning to etch their considerable marks on the sport. There were some laggards (notably the Yankees and Red Sox), but, Madden argues, the sport was, by 1954, ahead of much of the rest of the country in racial matters. Regrettably, he does not make the point convincingly and often loses sight of that focus, which is buried in far more conventional accounts of franchise shifts, batting races, and pennant chases, not only in the pivotal year of 1954 but also in the years preceding it. Still, the book brings together plenty of valuable information regarding the integration of baseball. --Mark Levine