David W. Zang

The story of Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first African American to play Major League baseball, is an important one to tell but also a very difficult one. Unbelievably poor record-keeping fills his family tree with few leaves and countless question marks. Sports statistics weren't nearly as thorough as they are today, and any existing contemporary analysis of his qualities as a baseball player were run through the lens of his race. It's not easy to tell who Fleet Walker was, but David Zang's work fills in more gaps than I thought would ever be possible.

Zang's research here is impressive, and while he provides quite a bit of supplementary information about contemporary race relations throughout the book, it's all relevant and in no way overbearing. It's easy to forget just how prevalent race theorists (including Walker himself) were, and they remained so far deeper into the 20th century than one would like to think. How can we really blame Walker for believing racial integration to be impossible when just two years prior to the release of his anti-integration pamphlet Our Home Colony, an adult African male was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in a cage with monkeys? I'd lose faith in white people pretty quickly, too.

Fleet Walker's Divided Heart is a great title for a biography of a man who never ceased to struggle with his identity. He was neither fully black nor fully white, and by the end of his life he resented both his whiteness and blackness to the point of perpetual restlessness and self-hatred. This is not a comfortable read, nor should it be. It's easy to tell the story of Jackie Robinson. That story has a much happier ending. Baseball (eventually) accepted Jackie with open arms, but gave nothing to Fleet and made no apologies for it. You don't see his smile the way you see Jackie Robinson's. You see his pain, his bitterness, his hatred of the color of his skin and of the black and white communities that would never accept him. Moses Fleetwood Walker was a complicated man who wasn't allowed to succeed in a game that was rigged against him, in a country that was rigged against him, in a world that was rigged against him.… (altro)

David Zang’s I Wore Babe Ruth’s Hat is a bit hard to describe. It is probably easier to describe what it is not rather than what it is. Zang has not written one of the more common sports books exposing some kind of doping or recruiting scandal, or a coaching manual, or a motivational exercise, or even a memoir about a championship season from his youth (be it amateur or professional). No, this is, instead, a book celebrating the role of sports in everyday life, a look at how amateur sports, by teaching us how to play and enjoy life, helps give meaning to ordinary lives all over the world.

David Zang tells us a bunch of stories here, stories in which he is sometimes the central character and sometimes only one of the minor ones that populate the tales. One of my favorites is the book’s first, “Chip Hilton’s Sports Cult,” because it reminds me so much of my own early reading experiences. Many boys, not long after they start reading independently, discover the world of sports fiction written especially for boys and girls their age. Most often, I suspect, the books are about baseball teams and they come in long series that completely capture the imaginations of those lucky enough to discover them. For the first time in their lives, young readers like Zang and countless others are exposed to the life lessons that sports can teach. Very likely, kids who read these books are sports fans for the rest of their lives. Zang, however, via his adult eyes, does point out that much of what the books have to say about sports building character, and losing and winning, is in fact more myth than reality.

Zang shares his sports failures right along with his more successful efforts. An early chapter, for instance, focuses on his experiences as part of his high school wrestling team, not a sport in which the author exactly covered himself in glory. And his recall of those seasons is impressive. Amusingly, however, while doing research for I Wore Babe Ruth’s Hat, Zang found out that a couple of his old opponents remembered the details of those old matches differently than he remembered them – if they remembered them at all.

There are stories about the basketball teams Zang played on; about his decision, as a kid, to blow off the rare opportunity to shake Jackie Robinson’s hand when the man was standing all alone just a few feet from him; about the evolution of college football; about the time in the basement of a Baltimore museum he slipped the Babe’s hat (not his baseball cap) on his head when no one was looking; about cheating in sports; about marathon running; about dressing as the field mascot for the Baltimore Ravens; and about impossible dreams. Each of the stories is filled with Zang’s astute observations and conclusions, some of which are bound to surprise most readers – and some that will directly contradict what they think they know about sports.

Part memoir, part sports book, I Wore Babe Ruth’s Hat, has a lot to offer.… (altro)