Blacks, Jews, and the National Pastime

Rebecca T. Alpert. Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 256 pp. $27.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-539900-4. Reviewed by Edward S. Shapiro Published on H-Judaic (December, 2011) Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion) Out of Left Field has set for itself an ambitious The book’s scaffolding, unfortunately, is too goal. “The story of the Jews who came out of left weak to sustain her argument. The major topics field and into the world of black baseball,” Rebec‐ she covers are the place of Jewish businessmen in ca T. Alpert argues, “provides a unique vantage black baseball; the history of an ostensibly black point through which to interpret the complex eco‐ baseball team; the role that Jews had in trans‐ nomic and social negotiation between blacks and forming black baseball into “comedic baseball”; Jews in the frst half of the twentieth century, tell the role of Jewish communist sportswriters in in‐ the story of black Jews, and understand Jewish ef‐ tegrating major league baseball; and the relation‐ forts at social justice in a business that was de‐ ship between Jackie Robinson and Hank Green‐ fined and constricted by the black-white racial di‐ berg, the most prominent Jewish ball player of the vide” (p. 34). Alpert, a member of the departments 1930s and 1940s. Of these topics, the most exten‐ of religion and women’s studies at Temple Univer‐ sively treated and for Alpert seemingly the most sity, is a prominent feminist scholar and the au‐ important is the involvement of Jews in the own‐ thor of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Les‐ ership of black baseball teams. Only three Jews bians and the Transformation of Tradition (1997), were prominent in the ranks of owners of black Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Ju‐ baseball teams--Eddie Gottlieb of Philadelphia, daism (2008), and Voices of the Religious Left: A Abe Saperstein of Chicago (also the owner of the Contemporary Sourcebook (2000). A partisan of Harlem Globetrotters), and Syd Pollock of New the Left, she seeks in this volume to tell the story York--and this is too small a sample to prove much of the involvement of Jews in black baseball in a of anything, particularly when Alpert’s story cov‐ way that will hopefully strengthen ties between ers nearly half a century. blacks and Jews along leftist lines. Her book is These three Jewish businessmen did not come part of the genre of oppression studies. “out of left feld.” To them black baseball was sim‐ H-Net Reviews ply another way to make a buck, and they dealt posed of “black Jews.” In fact, the group sponsor‐ with their players and fellow owners in the same ing the team was part of a black syncretic Chris‐ manner that the black owners did. Some black tian sect begun by William Saunders Crowdy, who owners resented these Jews because they in‐ had founded the Church of God and Saints of creased competition in a niche business at a time Christ. It was not uncommon for American blacks when economic prospects for ambitious blacks during and after slavery to compare their situa‐ were limited. Black baseball was a “marginal” tion with that of the Jews of the Bible, with the business, similar to junkyards, Hollywood flms, American South substituting for Egypt and the gambling, liquor manufacturing and distribution, Jewish fight to the Promised Land equated with and pawnshops, which offered opportunities to the escape of blacks from slavery and Jim Crow. aspiring frst- and second-generation Jewish en‐ But this did not make them Jews, any more than trepreneurs and which white Gentile en‐ Crowdy’s adoption of the Jewish calendar and ob‐ trepreneurs disdained as socially déclassé. To ar‐ servance of Jewish holy days, including a Sabbath gue that the involvement of these Jews reveals lasting from sundown Friday to sundown Satur‐ anything about the “complex” relationship be‐ day, made him and his followers Jews. Crowdy tween Jews and blacks is a stretch since only one continued to profess faith in Jesus, practiced foot of the three Jewish owners participated in Jewish washing, and forbade the drinking of wine. communal and religious life. Would things have Crowdy’s successor, William H. Plummer, de‐ been different had the three Jewish owners in‐ veloped the black community in Belleville near stead been white religious Methodists as was Norfolk, Virginia. Plummer’s group called itself Branch Rickey? Temple Beth El, but it continued to belong to the Alpert’s discussion of the role of Jews in what Church of God and Saints of Christ and practiced was called “novelty baseball” or comedic baseball religious rites that were a hodgepodge of Jewish is also questionable. The only Jewish businessman and Christian beliefs and practices. His son and involved in this was Pollock when he owned the successor, Howard Zebulon Plummer, went by the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Clowns. As was true title of “Bishop.” Even if one accepts Alpert’s dubi‐ with Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters basketball ous premise that the black residents of Belleville team, the clowning was done by blacks, not were authentic Jews, she presents no evidence whites. Even some black owners, concerned about that the players on the Belleville Grays, most of the bottom line, approved of baseball clowning whom as time went on were not even from since it brought people to the stadium. That it Belleville, considered themselves to be Jews or might have disseminated negative stereotypes practiced Judaism. In fact, many of the players on about blacks was irrelevant to them. In any case, the team were Christians and believed they were the number of Jews involved in this form of enter‐ playing for a Christian team. She quotes one of the tainment was too small to support the claim that players who trained with the Belleville Grays in Jews were responsible for the demeaning of 1939. “It was a Christian organization,” he wrote blacks by transforming black baseball into a min‐ (p. 59). strel show. Alpert, who was ordained at the Reconstruc‐ Out of Left Field reflects an orientation to‐ tionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, strong‐ ward Jewishness that emphasizes history and so‐ ly protests against the privileging of any one form ciology rather than theology or philosophy. This is of Judaism, particularly the “assumption that the manifested in Alpert’s discussion of the Belleville rabbinic Judaism practiced by Ashkenazi Jews is Grays baseball team, which, she writes, was com‐ normative and all other versions of Judaism must 2 H-Net Reviews be scrutinized for their similarities and differ‐ Jews who took seriously the moral demands of Ju‐ ences to that standard” (p. 22). She argues that the daism was alongside the radicals, and she laments exclusion of the Belleville Grays from American the demise of the radical coalition of blacks and Jewish history is racist and stems from the desire Jews during the golden years of the 1940s. She re‐ of Jews to assimilate and to be accepted as white. peatedly condemns Cold War liberals; bemoans She offers no proof of this, and her assumption is the fate of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who were counterintuitive since there are many blacks in “singled out” by anti-communists during the Mc‐ America and Israel today who have been wel‐ Carthy era; and criticizes Jews for embracing mili‐ comed into the Jewish community as long as they tant anti-communism, either out of an inordinate do not call their leaders “bishops” and continue to fear of communism or because they believed that see themselves as Christians. this was the price that had to be paid to prevent a The heroes of this book are Lester Rodney, recrudescence of anti-Semitism. The black-Jewish Nat Low, and Bill Mardo, three Jewish sports‐ entente limped along into the 1960s when those writers for the Daily Worker, a communist daily Jews who had remained true to the cause became newspaper published in New York City. The three, disillusioned “under the pressure of a reconfig‐ Alpert writes, exhibited “the only consistent and ured black politics that recognized that securing fundamentally moral stance against segregation,” legal rights alone would not end discrimination” had “access to the white baseball power struc‐ (p. 6). ture,” and used their “political skills” and contacts A common mistake of historians is to elevate to other political radicals to mount an effective the topic they are writing about into cosmic im‐ grassroots campaign against segregation in the portance. A good example of this is Alpert’s dis‐ national pastime (pp. 4, 30). They were, she ar‐ cussion of the relationship between Greenberg gues, indispensable in integrating major league and Robinson. Greenberg was then in the fnal baseball in 1947. In fact, Rickey, the general man‐ year of his Hall of Fame career, and Robinson was ager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Robinson, se‐ in his frst season in the major leagues. In a game lected by Rickey to be the major league’s frst in Pittsburgh in May 1947 between the Dodgers black player, disdained communism and wanted and Greenberg’s Pittsburgh Pirates, Greenberg little to do with communists, and Rickey vigorous‐ told Robinson not to become discouraged, words ly denied that he had been influenced by the Daily that Robinson appreciated. Both players discussed Worker. The communist movement was a tiny their encounter in their autobiographies, and and detested group in America during the 1940s, Alpert notes that it became an iconic event and and its espousal of the integration of baseball did “central to the myth of black-Jewish relationships more to discredit than to encourage the cause.

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