Every community has a baseball story. From major league stadiums to smalltown sandlots, tales of bat and ball prowess have united Americans across demographic lines. Although not a uniquely Indigenous game, there’s almost something surreal about the impact that baseball has on tribal communities. Every summer, Wisconsin’s tribal youth take to the field aiming to add their own stories to those of their elders. Decorated Oneida poet Louis Clark III, may have achieved enviable literary success, but when he waxes poetic, the topic at hand is the time in his youth when Clark struck out future marquee comedian Charlie Hill during a hometown game. While baseball looks different today than it did during its impetus more than a century and a half ago, the core of the game remains the same. Through triumph and tragedy, war and peace, dreams achieved and abandoned, baseball offers a lens to view America’s evolving ideas on recreational sports dating back to the Civil War. The game speaks to the fundamentals of human behavior, and reveals how athletics create local and national narratives that reverberate far beyond the ball diamond. 

Kevin Baker’s latest book, The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of the New City, illuminates how the rules and practices of the modern game both solidified and sprung forth from America’s most populous metropolis. An engaging chronicle of the Big Apple’s Major League game and its colorful cast of characters, the text doubles as an exploration of the city’s diverse populations, cultural movements, and national influence over nearly two centuries. From the famed Polo Grounds, to the House that Ruth Built, to Joe DiMaggio’s incredible career, Baker reveals how the game that captivated America’s most populous city was shaped by the residents who lived, worked, and played there. What happened in New York City didn’t stay in the boroughs, and Baker weaves box scores, statistics, reportage, and anecdotes to show how the national pastime rose to prominence in the twentieth century. Rich in cathartic stories of setbacks and triumph, Baker recounts how the modern tenets of rabid fandom, heartbreak, and gambling have always been a part of the ballgame.

The reportage of the games America’s first citizens played nearly a century ago offers a rich look at the times of those who hosted them. While “The Babe” and Lou Gehrig were adding to the Yankee’s record books in a racially homogeneous league, Native nations were playing games against Black teams whose ball players were often discriminated against in a segregated country. Nine years before Jackie Robinson became the first Black player to take the bases for a major league ballclub, the Menominee nation’s own Neopit Indians triumphed in games against “the colored club” known as the Piney Woods Mississippi Collegians. While it is interesting to read about Menominee pitcher Lefty Kakkak’s “five hit pitching,” it’s inspiring to recognize that Menominee people hosted a team from an African-American junior college. Piney Woods remains one of the oldest historically Black schools in the country, becoming the subject of a 2024 Hulu documentary titled, Sacred Soil: The Piney Woods School Story. A fascinating component of the inspiring story of a school striving to educate Black youth in the midst of Jim Crow America is the tribal athletes who hosted them for a ballgame.

Eric Vickery’s new book, Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, The Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash that Changed Everything, tells the story of “the deadliest tragedy in the history of American professional sports.” In 1946, many of the players on the Spokane minor league team were WWII veterans trying to reestablish themselves in baseball, which adds to the gravity of the loss of seven players in the mountainous crash. Vickery’s prose conveys the impact of the lost lives on the surviving players, their league, and the bereaved families. The team was branded with the reductive moniker “Indians”; Levi Warren McCormack was the only Native American among their ranks. But the Nez Perce tribal member’s “all-out hustle, productive bat, and enthusiasm with which he signed autographs for kids made him a fan favorite” on the field and a humanizing anchor in Vickery’s text. After retiring, he was honored with “McCormack Night” as a testament to the team’s “beloved ballplayer.” Vickery reveals that the Navy veteran “never got over the shock and frustration” of the tragedy that befell his team. The sport continued, and while healing is often difficult to recognize on any front, in 2006 the team worked with the Spokane tribal council to modify their name on their home jerseys to Sp’q’n’i, which is the Salish name for “Spokane.” It’s a promising new chapter in the team’s story.    

The sport of baseball continues to play a formative role in shaping communities across America. One of the MCs at the 2024 AIHEC powwow was the Menominee Nation’s own John Teller Jr. Today, he is the language and culture coordinator at Menominee Indian High School, but in the year the College of Menominee Nation was founded, he was a freshman on the baseball diamond. The April 14, 1993, newspaper noted Teller as one of the “utility players” who was “expected to see a lot of varsity playing time.” It is difficult to know how much of a role the game played in Teller’s or anyone else’s success, but the connections between success in both the game and life are easy to highlight. The most recent edition of the Menominee Nation News carries the headline “Menominee Wins Babe Ruth Championship Title.” It’s easy to look at the accompanying photo of the team posed on the field at dusk and imagine that their accomplishment will be part of their own narratives that reverberate far beyond the ball diamond.

Ryan Winn, PhD, teaches in the Liberal Studies Department at College of Menominee Nation.  

References

Baker, K. (2024). The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City. New York: Knopf

Delabrue, P. (2024 July 22). “Menominee Wins Babe Ruth Championship Title. Menominee Nation News, 1.

Hollar, M. (Producer), Tacsan, L.A. (Producer), & Anderson, J.J. (Director). (2024). Sacred Soil: The Piney Woods School Story [Film]. United States: Andscape, State of the Art.

Menominee Battles with Inexperience. (1993, April 14). Shawano Leader, 10A. 

Neopit Downs Colored Club. (1938, February 28). Shawano Evening Leader, 4.

Vickrey, E. (2024). Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash that Changed Everything. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in the Inquisitive Academic or any other opinion columns published by the Tribal College Journal (TCJ) do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TCJ or the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.