As a sports fan, I thoroughly
enjoyed reading the novel “Angry Black White Boy”. First and foremost, I
personally didn’t know that Fleet Walker was actually the first
African-American to break the color line in major league baseball. For the
longest time I assumed it was Jackie Robinson as that is what most people say.
I looked into this a bit more and apparently there was another former
slave William Edward White, who actually played a single game for five years
before Walker debuted for the Blue Stockings. Still though most baseball aficionados
consider Walker to be the first openly black player to play a full season.
I was not surprised when reading
about all the racism and murder attempts that Walker had to go through when
traveling around the country playing in various stadiums. In the history of
baseball, certain stadiums like Fenway park seem to be much worse than others.
The small segment titled “race” at the beginning of part 3 was eye opening for
me. I didn’t realize that entire mobs like the Klu Klux Klan would attend games
and wait until till after to attack. It made me wonder if this lifestyle was
worth it for people like Walker who have to always be on the move in order to
avoid being killed or hurt. In the opening section of Part 3 on page 267,
Walker jumps onto a random cargo train so that he is never seen again in
Georgia. He has no idea where he is headed but has to do this so that he isn’t killed.
I can’t even imagine the guilt that Walker must feel when he realizes he friend
Red Donner sacrificed his life so that Walker can escape and keep playing baseball.
These first black athletes were definitely heroes for dealing with this sort of
stuff while keeping up on the field but it’s important to not forget those who sacrificed
their lives to make this happen.
As Mr. Mitchell said, even
in today’s day and age there is still a lot of taunting and racist things that
are said to baseball players in the major league. I think baseball lends itself
more to this sort of stuff, as opposed to a basketball or football, as baseball
games are more of an experience where fans are out chanting and singing and
experiencing the stadium atmosphere while watching the game. In recent news, After the
Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park on May 2, Orioles
All-Star Adam Jones said he endured a barrage of racist slurs and
actions as he was manning his position in center field. He claims that a
fan threw a bag of peanuts at him and called him the N-word a handful of times.
The Fleet Walker/Cap Anson story within _Angry Black White Boy_ would fit right in to the History as Fiction class--the characters are (mostly) based on real people, and Fleet Walker was a real player who was active when baseball was segregated under the influence of Anson, but the preseason game in question took place a few years earlier than Mansbach has it (and he makes the date April 29, to coincide with the LA Riots more than 100 years later). There is no record, that I could turn up, of a large Klan contingent chasing Walker away from the stadium, or of one of the white players being lynched in his place after applying grease paint to his face. History is being blended with fiction throughout this story--but as you note, that fiction reflects a reality of race in baseball in the late 19th century.
ReplyDeleteThis was really interesting post. While reading the novel, I would sometimes forget about the inserts of the baseball scenes, and I think it was interesting to see them all tied together, not only with Macon's time period, but with ours too, in this post.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your description of what it felt like to read the excerpts from Fleet Walker's book in the novel. We can see how Macon fits into this entire narrative towards the end, as besides simply being obsessed with the book, it seems like Macon is trying his hardest to not be aligned with his own ancestor in Cap Anson. Interestingly, the last line of the novel throws this desire of Macon's into shambles, causing us to consider what character in the narrative Macon resembles the most.
ReplyDeleteI was really surprised in class when I heard that there was still blatant racism going on in Boston baseball today. I also didn't know that baseball was originally not segregated and then it became segregated. Baseball was a super interesting part of Angry Black White Boy.
ReplyDeletenice post! I liked Mansbach's addition of this baseball narrative into the novel. It really blended history and the fiction of the novel (as Mr. Mitchell said) and because of the historical connection we can connect the racism that happened in the novel to today's times. I was also surprised to hear just how bad the racism is today during baseball games, especially in Boston, and it reiterates just how much more we as a society need to change.
ReplyDeleteI dont mean to completely take the piss out of this post but what does it mean to be openly black? To a great extent the point of Angry Black White Boy is that racial identity can't be swapped or taken up but is immediately assumed from afar based solely on physical appearance and stereotypes, and that statement among others seem to ignore the intentions of the novel.
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