Invisible Men

Invisible Men: Life in Baseball’s Negro Leagues
American History Through Baseball
Johnson Randle

“Invisible Men” by Donn Rogosin was a very interesting book with a lot of information I never really knew about with the game of Baseball. He goes into good details describing what it was like for these men back in the day. Also, learning the true roots of the Negro league and where it all began for the Negro players was awfully intriguing. After reading the book a lot of different types of arguments stood out to me. Whether or not these two leagues should join as one. With the Jim Crow laws coming into affect, segregation was beginning to occur all throughout the nation. Since there were two different baseball leagues at the time. Basically the white and black leagues. Rogosin said in the book that the Negro league was the largest black business at the time. And that since the Negros weren’t as wealthy as all the whites, gangsters basically ran the league. The white papers never acknowledged the Negro players achievements. Only the black press would put time in to acknowledge the players. That was until Jackie Robinson came along and he changed the whole game of baseball to what it is today. Since the Negro league wasn’t as wealthy as the whites league. The Negros didn’t have any sort of stadium to play in. This is where barnstorming came into play. Since blacks around the areas couldn’t support their own teams, the teams had to move from all sorts of different stadiums to play games. The Negro league teams never had there own stadiums to play in. Along with the barnstorming the Negro leagues participated in many Latin America winter leagues. At this point the Negro league players knew they could play on the same level as all the white major league players. At this point in the novel its clearly showing this is when baseball is at its peak every single race is involved with it in America and from here it continued to grow and grow. Since all of this