The Set-Up Men: Race, Culture, and Resistance in Black Baseball

Trembanis (history, Immaculata Univ.) underscores the importance of black baseball, its significance as a black institution in many communities, and the opportunities it afforded. At the same time, team owners often had to contend with white proprietors of ballparks regarding the issue of segregated seating. Black moguls included "numbers" bankers, such as the Pittsburgh Crawfords' Gus Greenlee. Many other problems confronted black players, for instance, their easy dismissal as "sandlotters" by white sportswriters, the burden of segregated travel, and, from a historical vantage point, the uncertain record-keeping. Trembanis intriguingly contends that African Americans associated with the game employed cultural resistance while segregation reigned, thereby providing a bridge to the civil rights movement. Members of the black community, acting as "tricksters," "badmen," clowns, or simply skilled practitioners of the national pastime, stood as "set-up men" for racial pathfinders who shattered baseball's Jim Crow barrier. The establishment of the Negro National League in 1920 provided a measure of solidity, while the 1930s and 1940s served as something of a heyday for black baseball.