
Justice Batted Last
Ernie Banks, Minnie Minoso, and the Unheralded Players Who Integrated Chicago's Major League Teams
Don Zminda(Author)
University of Illinois Press
Published on 31. March 2025
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-0-252-04641-4 (ISBN)
Description
On May 1, 1951, Orestes "Minnie" MiNoso took the field for the Chicago White Sox and broke the color line for Chicago major league baseball. Ernie Banks integrated the Chicago Cubs two years later. The future Hall of Famers began their Chicago baseball careers against the backdrop of a 1951 race riot in suburban Cicero, where a white mob abetted by local police attacked a building that had rented to Black tenants. Don Zminda's account looks at these interconnected events alongside the little-known chronicle of Chicago's slow track to integrating major league baseball. By the early 1950s, the Cubs and White Sox organizations had become rich in Black and Afro-Latino stars and talented prospects. Unlike MiNoso and Banks, however, most of these minor leaguers never advanced to the majors or, if they did, it was for little more than a cup of coffee. Zminda also profiles these players, from Charles Pope, the Cubs' first Black signee, to larger-than-life fireballer Blood Burns.
Essential and dramatic, Justice Batted Last uses the lives and careers of two Chicago legends to tell a story of integration on and off the diamond.
Essential and dramatic, Justice Batted Last uses the lives and careers of two Chicago legends to tell a story of integration on and off the diamond.
Reviews / Votes
"Justice Batted Last is an exhaustively researched, elegantly written account of baseball's long slow road to full integration after Jackie Robinson broke its color line. In telling the story of how Minnie MiNoso joined the White Sox and Ernie Banks became a Cub, Don Zminda has given us an inside look at a crucial and often overlooked era in baseball history."--Ron Rapoport, author of Let's Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, The Life of Ernie BanksMore details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore
United States
Edition type
New edition
Illustrations
21 black & white photographs
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-252-04641-4 (9780252046414)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Don Zminda is a sports historian and the former vice president and director of research at STATS LLC. He is the author of Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920 and The Legendary Harry Caray: Baseball's Greatest Salesman.
Content
Acknowledgments
The Comet . . . and the Riot
A Long and Winding Road
Not in Our Back Yard
Beginning Their Journey
Pioneers
New Men, Old Ideas
At Wid's End
Window Dressing
The Problems We Must Solve
A Trying Year
The Forgotten One
The Arc of History
Keepin' On
Bingo, Bango, and Baseball
Stormy Times
Baseball's New Superstar
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The Comet . . . and the Riot
A Long and Winding Road
Not in Our Back Yard
Beginning Their Journey
Pioneers
New Men, Old Ideas
At Wid's End
Window Dressing
The Problems We Must Solve
A Trying Year
The Forgotten One
The Arc of History
Keepin' On
Bingo, Bango, and Baseball
Stormy Times
Baseball's New Superstar
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index