Justice Batted Last
Cloth: 03/11/2025
About the Book
On May 1, 1951, Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso 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 Miñoso 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.
About the Author
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.Reviews
"One can read Justice Batted Last and say not much has changed—or things did actually change, and were taken right back to the way they used to be. Nevertheless, Zminda says the reader will make those astute connections tying the past to the present." --Evan Moore, Chicago Defender"The new baseball book Justice Batted Last hits a homer." -- Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
"A new book highlights Chicago's pivotal role in both upholding and breaking baseball's color barrier." -- Edward McClelland, Chicago Magazine
Blurbs
“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 Miñoso 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 Banks
“A great read for anyone interested in the process of integration in Chicago, from the early history of Black baseball through the players who signed in the minor leagues to Minoso and Banks in the Majors. So much more is provided than just their baseball achievements. Everyone will learn something from this book.”--Leslie Heaphy, author of The Negro Leagues, 1869–1960
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