REVIEWS: BOOKS

BARTHEL, THOMAS. Baseball’s Peerless Semipros: The Bushwicks of Dexter Park. Harworth, N.J.: St. Johann Press, 2009. Pp. vii+304. Bibliography, notes, and images. $29.95 hb.

In Baseball’s Peerless Semipros: The Brooklyn Bushwicks of Dexter Park, independent histo- rian Thomas Barthel documents the history of one of the biggest spectator draws in during the first half of the twentieth century. The semipro Brooklyn Bushwicks rarely left their home of Dexter Park near the /Brooklyn border, and for good reason. The Bushwicks seldom played in an organized league, and in their best attendance years they averaged 15,000 paying customers for Sunday doubleheaders. Even as minor league and semipro baseball declined in the 1940s, the Bushwicks still outdrew the big- league Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves in 1945. Max Rosner, the team’s innovative owner, was a Jewish immigrant from Austria-Hun- gary. He kept the turnstiles spinning by advertising “Big League Baseball at Workingman’s Rates” (p. 18). In the team’s early days Rosner subverted the city’s Sabbath Statute by offering free admission and charging for a scorecard, which conveniently cost the same as regular admission. The circumvention did not always work, and Rosner reportedly spent many afternoons in jail waiting for his friends to bail him out. He also pioneered night baseball in the city in 1930 (five years before the Cincinnati Reds held Major League Baseball’s first nocturnal contest), allowing even more working people to attend games. Rosner understood that if he put a quality product on the field many area fans were willing to buy the cheaper ticket at nearby Dexter Park. The or were seventy-five minute trips for Bushwick residents, and even a Dodgers game required taking four different subway trains. Bushwick fans were pleased with what they saw from Rosner’s nine, even though a group of hardcore fans know as the “tenants” cheered lustily against the home team. The roster usually included a mix of three to five men with major league experience, locals who chose to stay near home rather than endure the grind of the minor leagues, up-and-com- ing prospects, and semi-pro regulars. The Bushwicks were paid well for these “second jobs”; in 1929 position players earned $30-$50 per Sunday, or the equivalent of the weekly pay of a factory worker (p. 80). Rosner scheduled the best semipro squads, black teams, and barnstormers, yet the Bushwicks typically took three-quarters of these contests. Barthel’s account is basically a year-by-year overview of Bushwick baseball and does not engage with existing historiographies. Yet historians of sport and race may find some useful nuggets here. In contrast to the lily-white, all-male confines of Major League Base- ball, Dexter Park featured players from many different backgrounds. Though the Bushwicks did not employ any African-American players, Buck Lai, a Hawaiian-Chinese infielder was a longtime stalwart. Large crowds attended games against the University of Japan and Meiji University. In 1937 the Hawaiian All-Stars came to Dexter Park with pitcher Jackie Mitchell, the “girl wonder from Chattanooga” whom Major League Baseball Commis- sioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned from professional baseball in 1931 (p. 138). In

Summer 2010 289 JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY addition, frequent contests with Negro League teams provided the stiffest competition for the Brooklyn club. Newspaper accounts showed the race-making/unmaking that occurred in Dexter Park. One writer connoted racial difference by referring to the Cuban Stars as the “mezzo-tinted athletes from the oasis of the Atlantic” (p. 71). However, many journalists were impressed by the Stars’ play. “Call it the great national pastime if you must,” a local columnist stated, “but all afternoon these Havana bred baseballers kept giving lessons to their American rivals” (p. 113). Games against black teams prompted writers to trade in stereotypes over the supposed comedic aspects of black baseball and how “colored teams” were able to withstand the heat better than whites but also brought out appreciation for Negro League skills. A sports editor noted that “without the sepia-tinged opposition” the Bushwicks would have no decent competition because they beat “the average Nordic combination in the same manner as a cat eliminates a mouse” (pp. 63, 75-76). Negro League stars such as Martin Dihigo, Oscar Charleston, and Josh Gibson were big draws for Bushwick patrons, many of whom came to the park more for the solid baseball than to cheer for the home team. Despite the fears of baseball executives that integration would drive white fans away, no such exodus occurred in 1947. Though Barthel does not address the larger significance of the multiracial contests as Dexter Park, one wonders if these spectacles helped to break down prejudice and smooth the way for Jackie Robinson’s entry into the majors. Rosner viewed Robinson’s triumph as a disaster, selfishly stating that “when the col- ored stars got their chance in organized baseball, semipro ball got it in the back” (p. 271). In reality, even before integration the Bushwicks and many other semipro and minor league operations were in steep decline. Barthel does an exemplary job of explaining how shifting cultural practices doomed the Bushwicks and many other independent teams. In 1947, a local bar advertised a new “large screen television,” and many other taverns added air conditioning (p. 234). Former Bushwick customers streamed out of Brooklyn for new homes on Long Island, and increasingly those suburban domiciles included television sets. Entertainment became more home-centered, but many men and women were also great joiners. Though some critics look back on the semipro era as an age when more people participated in sports, in fact the opposite was true. In the post-World War II period many New Yorkers wanted to play more and watch less. City planner Robert Moses bragged that “three softball games can be accommodated in the same space needed for a hard ball game” (p. 239). By 1948, Levitt and Sons turned out twenty houses per day and an embarrassed Rosner no longer listed attendance figures for Bushwick games. Three years later, Rosner built a stockcar track around the baseball field, and the traditional July 4 doubleheader was replaced by racing. Baseball’s Peerless Semipros is not an academic history, but it will be of interest to baseball and community sport enthusiasts because it provides a detailed account of the lengthy tenure of a successful independent team. The book also raises notable issues of racial formation, sport entrepreneurship, and the transformation of values and interests in the suburban age. —WILL COOLEY Walsh University

290 Volume 37, Number 2