Bailey Devinney

Sports in America 330

Dr. Cummins
June 25, 2022
Short Paper Two – The Negro Leagues Are Picked Apart

The most meaningful part of Zirin’s Chapter Five was the portion called The Negro

Leagues Are Picked Apart. This section showed how Jackie Robinson integrating into the majors

eventually destroyed the negro leagues. Some people mentioned in this chapter like Gerald Early

and Effa Manley write about the pros and cons of liberation in the baseball environment in

relation to the downfall of the negro leagues. With more and more freedom and liberation there

would be less of a need for these leagues.

Zirin used direct quotes from Gerald Early who is an American essayist and avid baseball

fan and Effa Manley who was the owner of the Newark Eagles from 1935 until 1948. Effa delt

directly with the decline of the negro leagues as when she tried to move players into the majors

like Larry Doby the talent from these leagues were picked over and the leagues struggled to

support themselves with the talent gone. It put Manley in a difficult place as she described

herself as “being squeezed between intransigent racial considerations on one hand and cold

business reasoning on the other,” (Zirin, 106). She fought for the leagues as this was the only

opportunity that African American players had to better their play and eventually would be seen

by major league scouts. Without these leagues there would be no steppingstone for the players of

this time.

Throughout this portion of chapter five Zirin makes the claim that after Jackie Robinson

everything was not integrated at first like history likes to paint it. The fight back and forth for the

negro leagues is the perfect example of the fight still happening after Robinson and the grey that

occurred in between. This claim I believe specifically from the account of Effa Manley and her
struggle trying to help players reach the big leagues but support the league enough to make sure

others can get there as well.

As for the claim “and it is undeniable that once the Negro leagues died, once baseball

ceased to have an institutional precedent in black life, black generally lost interest in professional

baseball as spectators and fans,” (Zirin, 106) I find false. Even today there are African American

spectators and fans of the major leagues. Baseball today still has an institutional precedent in

black life and there are many black fans who support and adore the sport of baseball. Just

because there is enough fight like there used to be in Jackie Robinson time does not mean

baseball has lost its appeal to African Americans spectators. This claim in this section of chapter

five was the only claim that I would have to disagree upon.
 Works Cited

Zirin, Dave. A People's History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest,
People, and Play. New Press, 2009.