Florida's First Big League Baseball Players: A Narrative History |
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Florida's First Big League Baseball Players: A Narrative History
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by Wes Singletary
Sales Rank: 2304780
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List Price: $19.99
$6.76
At Amazon
on 6-18-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 128 pages
Published by: History Press April 1, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1596291168
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1596291164
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
Weighs: 8.8 ounces
Product Description
In recent years, Florida's playgrounds have produced an abundance of exceptional professional baseball players: Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Luis Gonzales and Tino Martinez, to name only a few. Before 1950, however, only twenty-six Florida boys got their shot in the big leagues.
Players like Tampa's Al Lopez, a Hall of Fame member and baseball's first Hispanic manager, and Pensacola native Russ Scarritt, who set the Boston Red Sox record for most triples in a season his rookie year, blazed a trail that has opened the door for many of today's baseball superstars. Florida's First Big League Baseball Players, by baseball historian and enthusiast Wes Singletary, is a narrative journey into the early days of baseball in Florida and America before 1950.
Written from hours of interviews and presented in a narrative form that is engaging and informative, this collection allows the reader to travel back to a time when the game was more innocent and the heart of the men playing, a little bigger.
About The Author
Tampa native Wes Singletary is currently Executive Director for the Discovery of Florida Quincentennial Commission, Florida Department of State, mapping a statewide celebration of Florida’s Quincentennial in 2013. Wes has served as an adjunct history professor at Tallahassee Community College since 1993. He is author of Al Lopez: The Life of Baseball’s El Senor and is presently working on a biography of John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, a baseball hall-of-famer from the Negro Leagues; both are Florida natives. He currently resides in Tallahassee.
Reader Reviews
Florida's First Big League Baseball Players offers fans of the game a short, charming view of baseball and Florida during a time when both were fresh with promise. Today, however, with both baseball and Florida rotting from excess - steroids, player/management strife, arrogance, contested elections, urban congestion - the lives shared here are refreshing. These players, eight of the first 26 born in Florida and making it to the show by 1950, offer without a hint of regret their stories about the game and coming of age in a state that was only then doing so itself. At the end of WWII, Florida had just over 1 million residents. It was smaller in population than South Carolina. By 1978 it had almost 4 million. Today, Florida endures like nats the fastest growing population in the nation, 17 million at last count. And it ranks #1 in the number of native born major leaguers because of it, 35 this season alone. But ill-planned growth has not been kind to either baseball or the land of flowers. These eight men remind us of what things were like then, and while not all of it was good, clearly, things were simpler and we long for that. Whether it is Andy Hansen going home to eat beans over a money dispute with the tight fisted Branch Rickey, Jimmy Bloodworth tearfully standing along the first base line on Lou Gehrig Day in the Bronx, or Russ Scarritt's devastating tale of hardship and loss, Florida's First Big League Baseball Players provides memories that would now be forgotten were it not for this record. Author Wes Singletary, previously known as Al Lopez's biographer, has preserved it and for this he deserves kudos. Florida's First Big League Baseball Players is full of good stuff and you will enjoy it.
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Florida's First Big League Baseball Players: A Narrative History
Available from Amazon
Price: $6.76
Updated on 6-18-2008.
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