Class at Bat, Gender on Deck and Race in the Hole

Ron Briley is assistant headmaster and teaches history at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has taught for more than thirty years. His baseball essays have been published in the annuals for the Cooperstown Symposium and in such journals as Baseball History and Nine. He is the author of several books and lives in Albuquerque.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments     Preface     1 Ruth and Cobb as Cultural Symbols: The Development of a Mass Consumer Ethic in the 1920s  2 Don’t Let Hitler (or the Depression) Kill Baseball: FDR and the National Pastime (1932–1945)  3 Where Have You Gone William Bendix? Baseball as a Symbol of American Values in WWII   4 Amity Is the Key to Success: Baseball and the Cold War     5 Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night: Race, the Establishment, and the Retirements of Feller and Robinson    6 The Limits of Baseball Integration: Louisiana, the Texas League, and Shreveport (1956–1957)  7 Ten Years After: The Establishment, Race, and Robinson     8 More Legacy of Conquest: Long Term Ramifications of the Major League Shift to the West  9 The Houston Colt .45s: The Other Expansion Team of 1962     10 Milwaukee and Atlanta, a Tale of Two Cities: Eddie, Hank, and the Rover Boys Head South  11 The Times Were A-Changin’: Baseball as a Symbol of Values in Transition (1963–1964)  12 It Was 20 Years Ago Today: Baseball Responds to the Unrest of 1968    13 Baseball and America in 1969: A Traditional Institution Responds to Change    14 The A’s of 1972–75 and the Counterculture: Undermining the Hegemony of the Establishment 15 As American as Cherry Pie: Baseball and Reflections of Violence in the 1960s and 1970s   16 Roman Mejias: Houston’s First Major League Latin Star     17 Houston’s Latin Star Cesar Cedeno and Death in the Dominican Republic: The Troubled Legacy of Race Relations in the Lone Star State    18 The Albuquerque Dukes and the Summer of 1981: The Best Baseball in America    19 Baseball and the Women’s Question: Participation, Gender Stereotypes, and the Consumption Ethic   Index

“analysis of the Houston franchise and its inability to deal with its Latino ballplayers is illuminating...deals intelligently with the evolution of the players’ union...makes some wise judgments about the conflicts”—Choice; “unique...an educational pleasure”—Crosswinds Weekly; “every essay is worth reading...enjoyable and informative reading”—Unholy Troika.