The Live-Ball Era, 1920-1945 - Lecture 5

This is John Bodden, professor of history, and today we're talking about baseball during the live ball era from 1921 to 1945. Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Barnstorming, the Negro Leagues, World War II, and women playing professionally. The starting point for any discussion about baseball in the 1920s is a reminder that major league rules had changed in August of 1920. That month, Ray Chapman was killed on the field when a darkened baseball smashed into his skull. Thereafter, umpires received orders to start introducing clean, lively baseballs whenever a ball got hit, out of play, or was dirty. Only a handful of pitchers had permission to keep throwing the spitball. But it was a man named George Herman Ruth who had a truly remarkable impact on the game. He was born in Baltimore to parents of German ancestry and spoke German in the home. His father owned a saloon, and from an early age, George got into trouble. He refused to attend school, and Ruth's younger sister said that her father would beat him and beat him, but it didn't have any effect on the boy. Well, what we do know with certainty is that in 1902, Ruth's parents had their son declared incorrigible and placed behind the walls of St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory. He was just seven years old when his parents sent him to St. Mary's, and the image you see now is of Ruth in 1902 with his friend, John DiTullio. Inside of the reformatory, George learned to read and write. He studied carpentry and the idea was to take troubled youths in the city and prepare them for productive trades. Well, an Irish monk named Brother Matthias mentored Ruth and became a father figure for the Miss Cream. One thing Matthias did was to encourage George's athletic talent. He was good at anything he did, really. He was strong and powerful. He could throw a baseball harder than anyone else. The picture you see here was taken of Ruth inside the reformatory while he was playing catcher, which is unusual because Ruth is left-handed. And since all Baltimore schools had baseball teams, George played across the town and scouts took notice. At 19, he signed a professional contract. From 1915 to 1918, Babe Ruth established himself as the best left-handed pitcher in the American League. He had an overpowering fastball and a huge personality. Teammates called him Babe or the racist nickname Big Baboon. Ernie Shore, a teammate in Boston, said that Ruth was like a wild animal who had been turned loose from a cage. And though a pitcher, he would come up to bat and hit massive towering home runs. There was simply no one else like the Babe. Ruth's pitching exploits in Boston are the stuff of legend. He faced Walter Johnson five times in 1916 and never lost. That year, he pitched nine shutouts and led the league in ERA 1.75. Had the Cy Young Award existed in 1916, he would have won it. And the next year, the Babe was just as good. He dominated the Chicago Cubs in the 1918 World Series, shutting them out in Game 1 and holding them scoreless for seven innings in Game 4. Ruth brought tremendous success to Boston as a starting pitcher, but there was a problem of sorts. He was so talented, people wondered if his hitting might be even more valuable to the team than his stellar pitching. In 1919, the Red Sox decided to play Ruth in the outfield on a nearly full-time basis. With 543 plate appearances, he walked just over 100 times. Now, this is an important point to make because it means the Babe laid off bad pitches. He had plate discipline. And as for his 139 hits, the majority were doubles, triples, or home runs. In fact, he set a major league record with 29 home runs. Which all begged the question, what if Ruth stopped pitching, focused on hitting, and came to bat more than 600 times? Well, the Red Sox would never know, at least in Boston. Team owner Harry Frazee loved theater and wanted to finance a Broadway production, so he sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for the then-incredible sum of $125,000. Adjusted for inflation, that's nearly $2 million. Well, up to this point, Boston Red Sox had won the World Series more than any other team. The New York Yankees, for their part, had never won a pennant, and really played second fiddle to the highly successful New York Giants of the National League. Well, Ruth would make the Yankees synonymous with success, and the sale of Ruth would go down in sports history as one of the greatest business blunders ever. Now, the Yankees wisely converted Ruth into a full-time hitter, and in 1920, he hit 54 home runs. The following season, he eclipsed that mark with 59. Everybody wanted to see Babe Ruth. He drew so many fans that people called Yankee Stadium, built in 1923, the house that Ruth built. And in 1927, he hit 60 home runs. Not only that, Babe Ruth was exciting to watch even when he made an out. He would hit towering fly balls to the deepest parts of Yankee Stadium for outs, and those balls still elicited oohs and aahs from spectators. And when he struck out, he struck out big. He would literally spin around and fall down. He swung hard, and he swung a massive bat, so he was exciting to watch even when he made an out. And to this day, no one in Major League Baseball history comes close to his lifetime slugging percentage, which measures a player's power. For example, Babe Ruth came to the plate 693 times in 1921. He got walked 145 times and recorded 177 hits. Of those hits, 44 were doubles, 16 were triples, and 59 were home runs. So a majority of Babe Ruth's hits in 1921 were for extra bases. And if you're curious, there's high-definition footage of Ruth swinging. And to modern eyes, he can look a little off-balance, but it's clear just how much force he generated with his step to the plate. Millions of people admired Babe Ruth and his larger-than-life personality. Even teammates marveled. He would stay out all night and show up severely hungover before game time, and then wind up hitting a tape How could he do such things? Babe Ruth had insatiable appetites for everything, for food, for drink, for sex. He filled the room with his presence. He was loud. He did not filter himself in any way. When a reporter asked Babe about making more money than the President of the United States, he said, well, I had a better year than him. Ruth fit into the era's zeitgeist. He symbolized American power, American fun, American clout. During the Roaring Twenties, as they're known, New York and Chicago hummed with illegal speakeasies, jazz music, and organized crime. This was a time when the United States' economic and international influence soared. American factories churned out great quantities of automobiles and consumer goods. The U.S. Navy built its first generation of aircraft carriers. Hollywood became the world's dominant film industry. Another comment worth making is that children loved the Babe, and the Babe loved them back. He never forgot where he came from, and took the time to chat with kids, sign their autographs, and visit orphanages and hospitals. Not long ago, I discovered a sweet story from a newspaper about Babe Ruth's visit to Birmingham, Alabama for an exhibition game. Afterwards, he spoke at the Kiwanis Club, and when Ruth saw a tiny boy with crutches looking in on the event from a window, he stopped what he was doing, went outside, picked up the child, and carried him on his shoulders back inside the auditorium. Well, that was Babe Ruth, a flawed man with a big heart. A final comment is that he was a modern superstar. Adjusted for inflation, the Yankees paid him over one million dollars annually, and Ruth supplemented his pay by endorsing dozens of products, from cigarettes and soda to underwear and candy bars. Ruth also made money from barnstorming. We'll talk more about this practice later on, especially with respect to Negro League stars and Major League stars touring together, but this was a highly profitable practice of staging exhibition games in places where there was no Major League Baseball. So in the offseason, stars such as Babe Ruth would make a very good sum of money for three weeks of touring in the south and midwest so that people, Americans, could see the stars of the great northern cities. Ruth's legacy is substantial. Americans still talk about Babe Ruth. He's a national icon, and people outside of the United States still recognize his name. It's a little bit like the billions now who know the name Michael Jordan, America's greatest basketball player. Ruth helped popularize baseball in the United States and overseas. He made great sums of money and is remembered for the legendary feats, some of them untrue, but not unlike the the heroes of Greek mythology who stand above the mere mortals that walk on on earth. And at the end of it all, there are his statistical achievements to which all future power hitters will be compared. Burley Grimes was a Wisconsin native who developed an outstanding spitball during the dead ball era, and I should add that not everyone could throw the spitball effectively, much like the knuckleball or the screwball. So after Ray Chapman's beaning and death in August of 1920, Major League Baseball outlawed the spitball, but they created an exemption for players like Grimes, who had built his career on the pitch. And so what this means is that there was a bit of the dead ball era in the 1930s. Grimes kept throwing the otherwise illegal pitch for the remainder of his career, and it really brings up an interesting point about players like Babe Ruth, who started their careers during the dead ball era and finished in the live ball era. Playing conditions changed so dramatically after 1920, it begs a number of questions. You know, what kind of numbers would Babe Ruth have put up had he started his career in 1921 as a full-time hitter? Another good example of this would be Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby was a Texas native, the first of six children in an era of large families. At age 10, he and his brothers went to work in the meatpacking industry. And I want to pause to make a point about the United States in the early 20th century. Many coal mining towns, mill towns, meatpacking towns, you name the industry, maintained industrial leagues as a way for mill or mine employees to have a recreational activity and lay off the booze and have some fun, some civic spirit, company spirit. And the best players, crucially, got time off work or playing. So it was exactly that. That was where Rogers Hornsby got his start in baseball, on a meatpacking company baseball team, and he turned semi-pro as a teenager and reached the major leagues in 1915. His lifetime batting average, .358, is second only to Ty Cobb. And so he was a very, very special batter. And one thing that's immediately noticeable about his statistics is the surge in power after 1920. He started hitting more home runs in 1921. Well, why? It's because the ball changed. And you'll remember that Major League Baseball required umpires all through 1921 to replace any dirty ball with a clean one and leave foul balls in the grandstands among fans. And so that rule change turned Hornsby into a slugger. And so you think about Honus Wagner or Joe Jackson, who were both premier power hitters in 1915. Well, what if they had started their careers in 1925? You know, we'll never know what kind of home run totals those two powerful men would have amassed. Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig began his playing career just as the live ball era began in 1923. And he was fortunate in that respect. He was from a German-speaking family like Babe Ruth. But he had a very different upbringing and temperament from his future teammate on the New York Yankees. He attended Columbia University for two years. And he had a gentlemanly charm about him, like Christy Mathewson. He was a steady, even-tempered man. And Gehrig, I might add, you know, actually looked like a He was muscular. He was strong. Babe Ruth, by contrast, was overweight and looked like your Uncle Bob. But back to Gehrig. He was known for playing in 2,130 consecutive games at first base for the New York Yankees over nearly 14 seasons. A truly remarkable feat that many thought would never be broken. It earned him the nickname the Iron Horse. And one final thing. It's difficult to imagine any future team in Major League Baseball will ever have two players with such prodigious power in the same lineup. If you go to Baseball Reference and look up the all-time slugging percentage list, Babe Ruth is number one. Lou Gehrig is number three. Because white racism had barred black Americans from entering Major League Baseball, blacks established their own ball clubs for community entertainment and as sources of civic pride. Andrew Rube Foster is often called the father of Negro baseball for his visionary leadership and business acumen that helped create and stabilize an all-black professional league for his community. On February 13, 1920, Foster met with a group of black club owners in Kansas City. And there at the YMCA, the group established a constitution for the Negro National League. The league's founding is significant because this league achieved a stability that had eluded other black baseball organizations and it also expanded east and north from Missouri. Well, for over 30 years, various Negro leagues operated and served as examples of successful black-owned businesses. Black baseball had its own characteristics. One, black teams served smaller markets. Whites did attend games, but African-American populations alone could not realistically support six months of continuous play. Negro leagues had a shorter season. They might play as many as 70 games compared with the Major League schedule of 154 at the time. Batters in the Negro leagues therefore rarely came to the plate any more than 300 times. Two, the Negro leagues had a unique flair. Black baseball could feel different when compared to white baseball. For example, base stealing occurred more often in the Negro leagues and black teams often attempted the hidden ball trick. In some respects, the Negro leagues harken back to the days of King Kelly, if you recall his name, who was crafty and a performer. Famed pitcher Satchel Paige, we'll talk about him in a moment, was known for his theatrics such as telling his outfielders to sit down or his infield to go into the dugout while he struck out a star hitter. So, the Negro leagues had a showmanship you wouldn't find in baseball. Three, the Negro leagues had had greater instability. Teams and leagues folded more often and players sometimes changed teams mid-season if offered a higher salary. Star players left the Negro leagues for better money in Latin America or if barnstorming opportunities arose. Four, there are statistics for the Negro leagues but gaps exist and imprecise records handicap our historical reconstruction of what happened. In some, black baseball differed from white baseball but observers agreed that players in the Negro major leagues were playing at an elite level. White major leaguers saw black major leaguers as their peers in ability, at least the stars. Still, historians confront challenges when comparing the leagues because they had their own universes, different playing schedules, different data sets, and black Americans faced hardships that white Americans did not. As with any baseball player in any time, Negro league stars reflected the societies from which they came. James Cool Papa Bell was born in Starkville, Mississippi in 1903, the first of seven children. He moved to St. Louis in 1920 just as millions of other African Americans similarly migrated out of the rural south to escape mob violence against blacks and in the hope of finding improved economic opportunity. He was signed as a knuckleball pitcher but transitioned to center field and quickly made a name for himself as a great hitter and electric base runner. He thrilled spectators by stealing second and then third base in succession. This was the Negro league style of play. But Bell was known for his speed but he was also a great hitter. He led the Mexican league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, which is what we call the triple crown. One interesting note about Bell is that in Cuba and Puerto Rico he played with the fathers of future major league baseball stars Luis Tiantz and Orlando Cepeda respectively. Josh Gibson was easily the most powerful hitter in the Negro leagues and many informative observers said that he had the most powerful swing they had ever seen. Researchers debate how many home runs he hit during his career but we do know that he was very much like Walter Johnson who pitched faster than any of his peers in the teens and 20s. Well, Josh Gibson was a similar kind of player. No one hit as many home runs as Gibson did in the Negro leagues. In 1937, for instance, he had 97 at-bats for the Homestead Grays and hit 12 home runs. That amounts to one home run for every eight at-bats. And I should mention that Gibson was a catcher so he's behind home plate. He's taking a lot of punishment as important defensive player and yet he was this incredible slugger. Leroy Satchell Page was born poor in Mobile, Alabama. He got his start in pitching by throwing rocks for accuracy and not unlike Babe Ruth he had a troubled youth and was sent to a reformatory and not unlike Ruth was signed to play professional baseball as a pitcher. Page was a showman and a towering star of black baseball who lived an interesting life. He had a blazing fastball. That was one reason for his effectiveness. Another reason was his mastery of deception. He might throw overhand and sidearm. He had a quick delivery and a slow delivery. You couldn't keep your eyes off Satchell Page because no one knew exactly what he was about to do. He would wind up with his windmill and then throw a pitch faster than anyone had seen. Then he might toss a fantastic breaking pitch or deliver the sidearm. People paid to see this show and like most great Negro League stars Page played all over the United States including California and not very populated locations such as North Dakota. He played in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. His memoir Pitching Man includes a number of interesting and funny anecdotes about his his years in Latin America and it was men like Satchell Page who paved the way for integration. He was non-threatening to whites and he matched his big talent and showmanship with big performances. This is a picture of Dizzy Dean and Satchell Page. Dizzy Dean was a star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. Satchell Page was a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues of course and during the 1930s both made big money from barnstorming. This would usually occur in October, November, possibly even December. White and black fans would pay to see at least three innings of work from these two pitchers both at the top of their game. Each man might receive in excess of $1,000 for a single night's work and that would be about $18,000 adjusted for the time. Barnstorming which is something we talked about Ruth and Garrett doing, this was highly profitable during an era of segregation when there was this curiosity about black and white matchups. And white executives noticed by the 1940s there was talk of recruiting black players like Satchell Page into Major League Baseball. This is a photograph of the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Negro National League champions. I wanted to share it with you for three reasons. First, most black teams traveled from city to city on a bus like the one you see here. Second, this team had three future Hall of Fame players including Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson. So this was a very talented team playing very exciting baseball. And third, I think the picture gives you some sense of the pride these players brought to their communities during a time when African Americans lacked respect and equal treatment in the wider society. Well let's talk for a moment about Major League Baseball's relationship to the now defunct Negro Leagues. And this whole time I've been talking about the Negro Leagues but today these leagues are recognized as Major Leagues on the same level with the all white Major Leagues of the same period. Well the first Negro League players to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, well that occurred in the 1970s. So there was there was recognition for their accomplishments by the 1970s. Moreover the Society for American Baseball Research developed a whole section devoted a committed section devoted to researching the history of the Negro Leagues and compiling its statistics. Well recently baseball's commissioner in 2020 announced that the Negro Leagues had been reclassified as Major Leagues for the years between 1920 and 1948 and therefore the statistics of players for that time period have been joined to the Major League Baseball database which among other things has created a whole new set of career leaders. And players like Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinsons who eventually played in who played in both the Negro Leagues and Major Leagues would have their numbers combined and not separate. So if you go to baseball reference and you look for the career leaders all-time leaders you will see that Barry Bonds no longer holds the highest slugging percentage for a single season. It's Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston who I haven't talked about now has the second highest lifetime batting average after Ty Cobb. And so researchers are likely to make new findings. This is an unfolding story it's a bit like archaeology. The stock market collapse of October 1929 initiated an economic downturn in the United States that worsened in 1930, 1931 and 1932. Banks failed, industrial powerhouses like Germany and the United States were especially hard hit because both countries exported so many manufactured goods and they had so many industrial workers. Unemployment soared past 20 percent in both countries and you know generally the lack of credit meant construction projects ground to a halt. Crop prices fell and the economic pain was widespread. The hardship was felt broadly across society. Well during the crisis Major League Baseball salaries fell 25 percent. Even Babe Ruth agreed to a pay cut and owners opted for a 23-man roster instead of playing 25 players. Several teams didn't charge women admission into the ballpark as a way to get people through the gates. Despite these efforts attendance levels fell in every urban market. The St. Louis Browns for instance drew fewer than 10,000 spectators several seasons and most teams lost money for consecutive years and several nearly went into bankruptcy such as the Browns. So it was a rough time in American history. Fans in Washington DC booed President Herbert Hoover during the ceremonial first pitch in 1931. Interestingly baseball franchise owners did not exploit radio, a powerful new medium to expand their fan bases or advertising markets. Owners collectively feared that fans would stay home and listen to radio broadcasts if they didn't actually go to the ballpark. They didn't understand the power of radio to generate greater interest in their teams or more lucrative advertising opportunities to be had from radio broadcasting. Minor League teams by contrast embraced radio and they used it effectively. They considered other innovations such as installing lights for night baseball and the practice did eventually cross over. The first night baseball game occurred in Cincinnati at Crosley Field on May 24th 1935 and the novelty alone attracted many fans. Theodore Roosevelt trumpeted the event as it fit into his vision of an electrified America. It was positive news during a difficult time. Even games made it possible for more workers to visit the ballpark and escape their economic woes. The night games in Cincinnati were successful. They were well attended. It's a testament to the conservative traditionalism of Major League Baseball that owners strenuously resisted radio and night games. In fact it wasn't until after World War II that the Yankees offered night games. The Chicago Cubs did not have night games until 1988. Similarly the owners insisted on racial segregation. That's something that reduced the profitability of their teams. So in retrospect it's amazing that first it's amazing that no Major League Baseball team folded and two I think the depression speaks to the fact that this had become a game bound by tradition. A very conservative game. Okay changing topic I just want to say one thing about Abbott and Costello. This is a famous comedy duo that began performing their legendary who's on first routine during the 1930s. I won't say anything else about it except that you can look up a transcript of the routine it's legendary you can watch it on YouTube and any American born in the 20th century almost certainly has some familiarity with the routine because it's been performed so many times or referenced so many times and I'll just leave it at that. Hank Greenberg was born Hyman Greenberg to a Jewish Romanian family of immigrants in New York City. He was a gifted athlete, a strong tall man who reached the major leagues at 19 and played about 10 seasons. He was an a prodigious power hitter. He nearly matched Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in one season. He's one of the few players ever to rival Ruth's slugging percentage all time and he was also the first Jewish sports hero at a time when large-scale Jewish immigration to the United States had recently concluded. For that reason Jewish kids everywhere in the United States loved Greenberg and they felt more American knowing that one of their own had the highest slugging percentage in major league baseball or the most home runs for a particular season. Oh one more thing and he refused to play on Yom Kippur the Jewish day of Atonement. Joe DiMaggio was similar to Greenberg in that he was born to humble Italian immigrant parents in San Francisco, California and he made everything look easy while he played center field for the New York Yankees and he set the what would seem an unapproachable record of hitting safely in 56 consecutive games and he did that in 1941. But the larger point I could say a lot of other things about DiMaggio. He married Marilyn Monroe. He had an incredible career in New York but I think that the point I want to emphasize is that you had the first wave of major league baseball stars that were German, Irish and English and so DiMaggio and Greenberg were important. Greenberg the first great Jewish superstar, DiMaggio being the first Italian sports hero who was beloved by that ethnic community. You know Walt Whitman you might recall had said that he hoped baseball would take in newcomers and churn out Americans and his hopes in the mid-19th century seemed fulfilled although we can say that blacks were still excluded from the major leagues and so there was a there's an asterisk that we have to place upon that prediction. Now Ted Williams was a gifted hitter. He got on base even more than Babe Ruth because he walked so many times. He was such an accurate eye and he combined power with average and he was the last major league baseball player to hit above 400 during a full season. He did that in 1941 the same year DiMaggio set his record of hitting in 56 games consecutively. World War II was a watershed moment in American history. Millions of men were deployed overseas to Europe and Asia. The war profoundly changed the United States and what happened during the war will not be treated with any depth at this point. What I will say is that the game stars Hank Greenberg, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, they all served in the military. Entire minor leagues collapsed due to the mobilization of 12 million American men. Ted Williams, arguably the greatest pure hitter in American history, did not play baseball for five years due to his military service in World War II and then the Korean War. So what kind of lifetime numbers would he have put up without those disruptions in his career? And this speaks to the larger point that every era has its own peculiar playing context and many people who had careers at this time lost playing years. Well, major league baseball actually didn't stop from 1942 to 1945. Its players just tended to be much older or have military disqualifications and that created opportunity for older players and those not subject to the draft. And another interesting thing occurred. Women played professional baseball. Thanks to the highly successful film A League of Their Own starring Tom Hanks and Gina Davis, many more Americans know about this fascinating story than would otherwise be the case. The film is set in 1943 and it tells a fictionalized story about the Rockford Peaches. But before we get into that league's founding, I should mention that the original name of the league was the All-American Girls Softball League, which is another digression. Softball took off in the 1930s as a recreational sport for both sexes. It was developed as a form of indoor baseball with a smaller playing field and larger ball that could not be hit as far. The game's popularity increased during the Great Depression as it had advantages over baseball in that teams didn't need wide open spaces or as expensive equipment to play. Thus a new generation of American women played this fun accessible cousin of baseball. The photograph you see is of a softball team in Los Angeles County before the outbreak of World War II. Thousands of women's softball teams existed in the United States and Canada at the end of the 1930s, and softball, unlike baseball, was gender neutral. Men and women played it and enjoyed it. So you can see also from the picture that fashion norms had changed since the 19th century. Respectable women could wear shorts and other clothing suitable for exercise. After the outbreak of World War II in the United States, P.K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, was a driving force behind a new idea. He knew girls were playing softball, playing it well, and he thought why not establish a professional league as a source of recreation and entertainment during the war years. So Wrigley financed a league for middling-sized cities in the Midwest. Initial tryouts were held at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and scouts recruited players from amateur softball leagues. No black players received invitations, which reflected the prevailing climate of segregation in the United States. The league's rules changed over time. A bit like the 1880s in Major League Baseball, initially a softball was used. The last year of play, a regulation baseball was used. The league permitted overhand pitching as opposed to strictly underhanded pitching by 1954, and the mound was moved from 50 feet to 60 feet from home plate. So there's a very interesting and rich history there, which I won't go into too much detail, but the all-girls league reflected prevailing social norms. That's a point I wanted to make to you. Organizers required ballplayers to wear skirts, quite short ones I might add, and lipstick. The league wanted these female ballplayers to project their femininity on and off the field, and each team had an assigned chaperone. The league did not last beyond the 1954 season, but it was truly groundbreaking as a league composed entirely of female professional athletes, and people paid to attend their games. In 1948, for instance, the 10-team league attracted 900,000 spectators. This photograph is of Dolores Dolly Brumfield White in 1947. She grew up in Mobile County, Alabama, where she played baseball and softball. In 1947, she received an invitation to spring training with the South Bend Blue Sox in Havana, Cuba. Again, these connections with Latin America, very interesting. Remarkably, her parents and high school principal allowed her to become a professional after receiving assurances from the Blue Sox team chaperone that she would be cared for and appropriately supervised. During her playing career, she attended Alabama College. Today, it's the University of Montevallo, the institution where I teach. During her Montevallo years, very few people knew she was a professional baseball player because it wasn't considered ladylike to play sports professionally. So again, baseball always teaches us about the wider society. Well, what about Dolly's playing career? Well, she matured into a very good player, posting the best fielding average for all position players in 1950 and posting the second best league batting average in 1953. So she really improved from a 15-year-old into a very good baseball player in her early 20s. So her story reflects various realities. Girls played baseball in mid-century America. This was a time before there were dozens of different recreational activities. Baseball was still the great national game. The war years created an interesting opportunity for her and others to play sports and tour the Midwest. Today, she and other AAGPL players have a permanent exhibition in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. In 1946, not 1945, in 1946, Bob Feller, Bullet Bob Feller, the fastest pitcher in Major League Baseball, organized his own highly profitable barnstorming tour with Satchel Paige, the legendary Satchel Paige, who selected a group of Negro leaguers to accompany him, and they traveled to the West Coast. Americans wanted to see these white-black matchups. And beginning in 1947, the next year, a whole generation of Negro League stars, including Satchel Paige, would begin the process of integrating the major leagues. And that's the topic of my next lecture. As always, there are more questions than answers. Here are a few of the materials I relied on for this lecture. I look forward to your comments and questions.