Rob Ruck is a Professor in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh. His most recent book is Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL. He is also the author of "Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game," "Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh," "The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic," the co-author with Steve Nelson and James R. Barrett of "Steve Nelson, American Radical," and co-author with Maggie Patterson and Michael Weber of "Rooney: A Sporting Life."
During the half century that baseball was divided by a color line, black America created a sporting world of its own. Black teams played on city sandlots and country fields, with the best barnstorming their way across the country and throughout the Caribbean. A century ago, on Feb. 13, 1920, teams from eight cities formally […]
