UWM Faculty Contribute to New Book on Baseball

MILWAUKEE -- Two faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) have contributed to a book due out in May which highlights the unfolding of cultural diversity in American baseball. Written by some of the most distinguished baseball historians, "The American Game: Baseball and Ethnicity" brings together for the first time in a single volume an ethnic and racial profile of American baseball.

Larry Baldassaro, professor of Italian and director of the UWM Honors Program, co-edited the book (with Richard Johnson), which is a compilation of nine essays. It is being published by Southern Illinois University Press in the "Writing Baseball" series. In addition to co-editing the book, Baldassaro wrote one of the essays, "Before Joe D: Early Italian Americans in the Major Leagues." Neal Pease, associate professor of history and an expert on both American baseball history and Polish history, authored "Diamonds Out of the Coal Mines: Slavic Americans in Baseball."

Adding to the local flavor of "The American Game" is the foreword by Milwaukee's own Bud (Allan) Selig, commissioner of baseball.

"Today baseball reflects the American population as well as or better than any other sport or enterprise," writes Selig. "At the start of the 2000 major league baseball season, 198 players, nearly 24 percent of all players on major league rosters, were born outside the fifty states."

Although the sport could not truly be called representative of America until 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, athletes of German and Irish descent began entering the major leagues in large numbers more than 100 years ago. The essays show how, over the course of the 20th century, each new era reflected the changing nature of baseball - and of American society.

Other essays in the book feature:

Anglo Americans (by Frederick Ivor-Campbell)
German Americans (by Larry R. Gerlach)
The Irish (by Richard F. Peterson)
African Americans (by Jules Tygiel)
Jewish Americans (by Steven A. Reiss)
Latinos (by Sammuel O. Regalado)
Asian-Pacific Americans (by Joel S. Franks)

Baldassaro and Pease are members of UWM's "Professor Baseball" team, a group of UWM faculty and staff members who dole out baseball trivia with an academic twist. Fans can test their knowledge against the Professor Baseball team every time they go to a Brewer's game at Miller Park, where questions are posed during an animated scoreboard feature.

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