Stolen Dreams by Chris Lamb

Author:Chris Lamb [Lamb, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO003030 Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History, SOC001000 Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, SOC031000 Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
Publisher: Nebraska

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The opening ceremonies for the eighth Little League World Series began on Tuesday, August 23, with eight teams from San Diego, California; Winchester, Massachusetts; Hamtramck, Michigan; Delaware Township, New Jersey; Glens Falls, New York; Morrisville, Pennsylvania; Auburn, Alabama; and Alexandria, Louisiana. Eighty-eight-year-old Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in Major League history, threw out the first ball. This was the last appearance for Young, who had attended each of the Little League World Series. He died three weeks later. Stotz was one of the pallbearers. Other guests of Little League Baseball included Pennsylvania’s governor, George M. Leader, and General George C. Marshall, then secretary of defense.

The press in Williamsport included Ted Husing, who broadcast the game on CBS radio; local sportswriters; wire service reporters; Bob Considine, one of the most famous journalists in the country; and Sam Lacy, of the Baltimore Afro-American, the country’s best-known sportswriter working for a Black newspaper. Lacy and Considine had known each other since they were teenagers in Washington DC. Both were talented athletes who wanted to be journalists. Lacy remembered when they were playing tennis one day. “Sam, you know it’s a shame,” Considine told him. “When we grow up, I’m going to be able to go a lot farther than you.”24 Considine was right. He became one of America’s best-paid journalists—a syndicated newspaper columnist, prolific author, war correspondent, screenwriter, and commentator. Lacy spent his life working for modest wages for African American newspapers. But he became as well known to his readers as Considine was to his.

Lacy, who was born in 1903, grew up in Washington DC near the home of Griffith Stadium, home of the Major League team, the Nationals, who would later change their name to the Senators. Lacy’s father, Sam Sr., a researcher at a law firm, introduced his love of baseball to his son. The two regularly attended games at Griffith Stadium, where they sat in the segregated section in right field.25 When Lacy was a teenager, he began working at Griffith Stadium during Nationals’ games—shagging flies during batting practice before the games and then either selling concessions or operating the scoreboard during the games. When the Nationals were on the road, the team’s owner, Clark Griffith, leased the stadium to Negro League teams. Lacy, therefore, saw both African American and white teams. He said he saw many African American players who were equal or better than whites in the Major Leagues. This experience shaped his lifelong interest in racial equality. Segregation deprived the best African American players of playing in the big leagues, Lacy said, but it also deprived white players of playing against them and white spectators of watching those players.26

After Lacy attended Howard University, the Washington Tribune hired him to be a staff reporter and promoted him to sports editor. In 1935 Lacy went to see Griffith, who he knew from working at the ballpark, and asked the Senators’ owner why African Americans were not in the big leagues. He told Griffith that the perpetually

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