Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (Sport and Society)

Rating:
Summary: Informative and interesting
Review: This book was a natural selection for me, given my Pittsburgh heritage and a life-long interest in baseball. The work surpassed my expectations and I would recommend it highly, even to those who have less interest than I do in baseball and in the Negro Leagues specifically. Ruck's finest achievement in this book may be his setting of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays in the context of Pittsburgh culture at the time. He devotes a good portion of the early part of the book to covering the patterns of migration into the city during the industrial age, and by doing so he truly brings the city to life, especially for those who are familiar with its layout today. Pittsburgh is an unusual city because of the ethnic residential pockets that were formed at the specific time that the mills and the mines were being filled, and those migrations leave their stamp on the city even now. I can't honestly declare this book to be a page-turner for someone who has never been to Pittsburgh, or who cares nothing about Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, or Gus Greenlee, but if you ever do walk the Hill in Pittsburgh and want to know more about what produced those remarkable achievements, this book is a wonderful source.