Golden Era of Major League Baseball

In The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte explores the noteworthy and significant changes taking place in baseball in and around the 1950s. Beginning with Jackie Robinson’s rookie season in 1947, Soderholm-Difatte provides a careful and thorough examination of baseball’s integration, including the state of blacks in the majors ten years into the Jackie Robinson era, when elite players were accepted but few blacks with "average" major league ability were regulars in the starting lineup. The author also looks at the dying practice of player-managers, the increasing use of relief pitchers and platooning, and the continued dominance of the New York Yankees. The Golden Era included three central characters whose innovations, strategies, and vision changed the game, and each of their stories is told in this book: Branch Rickey, who challenged the baseball establishment by integrating the Dodgers; Casey Stengel, whose 1949-1953 Yankees won five straight championships; and Leo Durocher, whose spy operations was a major factor in the Giants’ 1951 pennant surge, but who was also a leading innovator in managing his pitching staff. Concluding with an overview of how baseball’s race and diversity issues have evolved since the Golden Era, this book will be of interest to baseball fans and historians as well as scholars examining the history of integration in sports.

Bryan Soderholm-Difatte is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and a regular contributor to The Baseball Research Journal. He is the author of The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration, America's Game: A History of Major League Baseball through World War II, Tumultuous Times in America's Game: From Jackie Robinson's Breakthrough to the War over Free Agency, and The Reshaping of America's Game: Major League Baseball after the Players' Strike,all published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Introduction Chapter 1 :The Arc of Integration Chapter 2: Boston's Postwar Dynasty That Wasn't Chapter 3: End of the Player-Manager Era Chapter 4: Enter Stengel the Grandmaster Chapter 5: Last of the Titans and Baseball's Expansion Imperative Chapter 6: Brooklyn's Answer to New York Chapter 7: Durocher the Spymaster Chapter 8: Charlie Dressen's Worst Day at the Office Chapter 9: The Age of Enlightenment About Relief Pitching Chapter 10: Slow-Walking Integration Chapter 11: Exit the Grandmaster Chapter 12: Consolidating Integration and the Importance of Hank Thompson Chapter 13: The Brooks Lawrence Affair Chapter 14: The Braves' New World Chapter 15: "Perfessor" Stengel's Controlled-Chaos Theory of Platooning Chapter 16: Diversity and the Los Angeles and Chicago Speedways Chapter 17: Coming to Terms With Integration Bibliography Index About the Author