Book Notes
Middle Innings: A Documentary History
of Baseball, 1900-1948. Compiled and
edited by Dean A. Sullivan. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xviii +
238p.; illustrations, bibliography,
index.) Baseball, if no longer reigning as the
national pastime, still occupies a
secure place in America's collective psyche.
Evidence of this nostalgic affection is
deeply rooted in the game's vast statistical
lore, it's colorful phraseology, and an
odd, sometimes zany cast of characters.
Figures such as Williams' .406 batting
average and Aaron's 755 career home runs,
phrases "hit 'em where they
ain't" and "who's on first?" plus personalities like Nick
Altrock and Rube Waddell have become
legendary. Football, basketball and even
soccer may have usurped baseball's
supremacy as the nation's sport of choice but
they lack its rich sense of tradition.
Baseball as we know it today has been
played in the United States since the sec-
ond quarter of the nineteenth
century. Middle Innings provides
entertaining
glimpses of the sport when it emerged
from a rural recreational club game to an ur-
ban, mass spectator sport. Six chapters
and 105 articles, most of them period
newspaper accounts, offer fascinating
insights. More selective than comprehen-
sive, the articles describe the great
baseball writers, college teams, the Negro
National League, amateur teams and
players unions. Baseball's deep imprint on all
aspects of culture, especially urban
America, even reached the stages of Vaudeville
in 1908 with "Take Me Out to the
Ballgame." Babe Ruth's death in the summer of
1948 symbolically marked the end of
baseball's middle era: white, pre-expansion,
and pre-television. For many, the golden
era of baseball began in 1947 when Jackie
Robinson broke the major league color
barrier. The game's transition into the
"modern" era might serve as
the opening chapter in Sullivan's sequel volume, Final
Innings.
Ohio Historical Society Steve
Gordon
Portage Pathways. By Loris Troyer. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University
Press, 1998. ix + 370p.;
illustrations, index.) This is a selection from fifteen years'
worth of a weekly "historical"
column in the Ravenna Record-Courier written by
retired editor Loris Troyer. The 140
stores are grouped into six headings of "History
and Historians," "Men and
Women of Portage County," "Communities, Landmarks
and Landmark Events," "Groups
and Institutions," "Business and Commerce"" and
"Politics." Troyer uses his
experiences as a local newspaperman to good advantage,
incorporating material on relatively
contemporary people and events undoubtedly
first collected for news articles. The volume is not, therefore, a rehash of
information in the 1885 or 1957 county
histories or 1898 Biographical Record.
Nonetheless, the stories' narratives
(and even their titles) have the unmistakable
journalistic flavor of the original
instead of a more detached and critical historical
approach. Although a complete table of
contents is lacking, a fairly comprehensive
index is provided.
Ohio Historical Society David A.
Simmons
Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black
Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. By
Versalle
F. Washington. (Columbia, Missouri:
University of Missouri Press, 1999. xv +
113p.; maps, appendices, notes,
bibliography, index.) This compact volume is the
story of the Fifth United States Colored
Troops, Ohio's most noteworthy African-
American regiment serving in the Civil
War. Raised in 1863 (originally as the 127th
Book Notes 119
Ohio Volunteer Infantry), the Fifth USCT
served with distinction throughout the
remainder of the conflict. The unit saw
action before Petersburg and Richmond,
Virginia, in 1864, and participated in
the Fort Fisher, North Carolina, campaign the
following year. As a testament to their
bravery, four of the regiment's soldiers were
awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
Eagles on Their Buttons attempts to fill a void in Civil War literature by
detailing
the experiences of northern free-black
volunteers. Motivated by the desire to prove
their manhood as a means to gain
equality under the law, northern African
Americans endured the hostility of
politicians, editors, and white comrades, not to
mention Confederate bullets. Their valor
in combat did not ensure equal treatment
after the war: social conditions in Ohio
remained nearly unchanged from the ante-
bellum years. Yet the service and
sacrifice of the Fifth USCT and other units like it
led eventually to suffrage rights for
black males.
Though informative, this work has
deficiencies. A lack of archival material
written by black soldiers makes this
study chiefly a look at the regiment through the
eyes of its white officers. The
treatment of battlefield operations is uneven, with
some minor factual and interpretive
errors. The volume's two maps fail to illustrate
places mentioned in the text. Finally,
analysis of enlistee motivation and the war's
effects on northern African Americans is
thin. Eagles on Their Buttons, in spite of
these weaknesses, will appeal to both
general readers and those interested in the
contributions of Ohio's African
Americans to the war effort.
University of Toledo Christopher S. Stowe
Other books received by Ohio History,
which might be of interest to our readers,
include:
On the Eve of Conquest: The Chevalier
de Raymond's Critique of New France in
1754. Translated and edited by Joseph L. Peyser. (East
Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1997. xii + 181p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, appendices,
index.)
Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio Statehood. By
Alfred Byron Sears.
(Columbus: The Ohio State University
Press, 1998. 288p.; illustrations, index.)
REPRINT
Sailors of 1812: Memoirs and Letters
of Naval Officers on Lake Ontario by James
Richardson, Arthur Sinclair, Henry
Kent, Barzallai Pease. Edited by
Robert
Malcomson. Illustrated by George Balbar.
(Youngstown, New York: Old Fort
Niagara Association, 1997. 96p.;
illustrations, notes.)
Life, Liberty, & Property: A
Story of Conflict and a Measurement of Conflicting
Rights. By Alfred Winslow Jones. Edited by Daniel Nelson. (Akron,
Ohio: The
University of Akron Press, 1999. xii +
230p.; notes, appendix, index.) REPRINT
Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Volume 1: Aaroe-Blanchfield. Edited by John T.
Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent
Tarter, and Sandra Gioia Treadway.
(Richmond: The Library of Virginia,
1998. xxii + 557p.; index.)
Dictionary of Virginia Biography.
Classified Index of Biographies. Volume
1:
Aaroe-Blanchfield. (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 1998. 47p.;
alphabetical
list, chronological list, places of
origin, principal places of residence, occupations,
women, African Americans, Native
Americans.)
A Chance for Love: The World War II
Letters of Marian Elizabeth Smith and Lt.
Eugene T Petersen, USMCR. Edited by Eugene T. Petersen. (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State University
Press, 1999. 300p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index.)