Baseball's Early Players: A Worthwhile Documentary Project

"Baseball is ballet without music.  Drama without words..." wrote sportscaster Ernie Harwell in his baseball essay, 'The Game For All America' (originally published in the 1955 edition of The Sporting News)

There's a history behind baseball.  A connection to the past.  A tradition to enjoy into the future. It's a sport I've always loved. I can watch 'Field Of Dreams' any day.  I've seen Ken Burns baseball documentary.  Sometimes, I'll listen to a ballgame on AM radio while sitting in traffic just so I can feel like I'm at the ballpark.  And so there's a sadness I feel when autumn rolls around and I hear the beginnings of football being uttered on the airwaves.  Because the next baseball season feels so far away...

Sure, we're well into football season but in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, baseball still reigned.  And I was delighted to see this.  The cover story of the travel section highlighted Cooperstown, New York. Someday, I want to visit Cooperstown, home to Baseball's Hall Of Fame.  As kids, my father talked about taking my brother there.  But never me.  Maybe because I'm a girl and he didn't think I'd be interested.  Although I may not be fanatical about rooting for certain teams, I enjoy baseball for the true sense of it-- for the pure 'love of the game.'

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Neftalie Williams, a USC grad student, grew up riding skateboards, not eating hotdogs and watching ballplayers with awe at a local ballpark.  But for the next five years, his life will be all about baseball.  His mission is to document the momentous and rocky beginnings of Major League Baseball's racial integration from 1947 to 1971.  He wants to capitalize on living history by reaching out to each and every living African-American baseball player from that era.  His hope is to interview them on camera, record their thoughts, their stories, their emotions from that time.  By the end, if it all goes well, he'll not only have a comprehensive catalog of baseball's history, but our history as well.  I wish him the best of luck in his mission.  I think it's an absolutely worthwhile cause and a project I feel I'd enjoy researching myself.  Without The Los Angeles Times, I never would've heard of Neftalie Williams nor his baseball project or his passion.  To learn more, read the original article, Living Bridges To History by LA Times writer, Zach Helfand.

Follow this link to read the full content of Ernie Harwell's 1955 baseball essay, 'The Game For All America.'

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