Playing with Tigers

George Gmelch is a professor of anthropology at the University of San Francisco and at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He is the author of fourteen books, including In the Field: Life and Work in Cultural Anthropology; In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People, with J. J. Weiner (Bison Books, 2006); Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball (Bison Books, 2006); and Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime, with Dan Nathan (Nebraska, 2017).

• List of Illustrations    Acknowledgments    Introduction    1. Ambition for the Game    2. Breaking In: Duluth-Superior Dukes    3. Wearing Kaline’s Pants: Jamestown Tigers    4. A Little Wildness: Jamestown Tigers    5. Spring Training: Tiger Town    6. Putting Up Numbers: Daytona Beach Islanders    7. Moving Up: Daytona to Rocky Mount    8. Double Passage: The Carolinas    9. Southern Exposure: The Rocky Mount Leafs    10. When the Cheering Stops: The Rocky Mount Leafs    11. Exiled: The QuÉbec Provincial League    12. Lights Out: Drummondville Les Royaux    Epilogue    Appendix: What They Did after Baseball    Notes

"You don't need to have any particular team affiliation to enjoy this book. It really is a good book about a life journey that has a baseball flair to it."-Gregg Kersey, Gregg's Baseball Bookcase "Playing with Tigers provides a wonderful, easy-to-follow anthropological view of an above-average minor league baseball player coming of age in a rapidly changing social environment."-Timothy Dodson, Journal of Sport History "Gmelch's Playing With Tigers balances humility with grace, heartbreak with humor, and victory with defeat in a way that readers not only understand, but appreciate."-R. Zachary Sanzone, Spitball "George Gmelch is to be congratulated for the courage it took to write this memorable chronicle of life and baseball in the 1960s."-Ron Briley, NINE “A completely engaging, insightful tour of a lost era of the 1960s in baseball and America. . . . A ballplayer-turned-anthropologist, Gmelch skillfully applies his ethnographic skills to his own experience. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to want to read this fascinating, very personal, and often surprising story. Enthusiastically recommended.”-Robert Elias, author of The Empire Strikes Out    “George Gmelch is an astute guide to the magic and mystery of the Minor Leagues in the 1960s, and Playing with Tigers belongs alongside baseball memoirs by Brosnan, Bouton, Jordan, and Hayhurst. Anyone who cares about the people who play the game should read this insightful and intelligent book.”-Trey Strecker, editor of NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture “A compelling glimpse into a vanished social world, the trials and tribulations of an aspiring Minor League Tiger, as well as the glimmerings of an insightful, productive social scientist who still loves and has a feel for the game.”-Daniel A. Nathan, president of the North American Society for Sport History and author of Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal  “A remarkable baseball story from an extraordinary anthropologist and writer.”-Dan Gordon, author of Haunted Baseball “A poignant memoir about coming of age in and through baseball in the turbulent 1960s. Racial, gender, political, and identity conflicts-they’re all here, recounted by a gifted author.”-Jean Ardell, author of Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime “George Gmelch has written a true and compelling story of Minor League Baseball in the ’60s. . . . It’s an engaging and accurate portrait of the lives and work of Minor League hopefuls chasing the dream of making it to the Majors.”-Jim Leyland, former Major League manager of the Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins, and Pittsburgh Pirates