The Smithian

[on the move]

Amidst the hoopla surrounding the…movie ‘42’ and Jackie Robinson’s heroic integration of major league baseball in April, 1947, the media has all but forgotten Larry Doby’s integration of the American League less than three months later. Unlike Robinson who spent a year with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm team, Doby moved directly from the Negro League Newark Eagles to the Cleveland Indians. In his first full season in 1948, Doby helped the Indians win the World Series, a feat that Robinson did not accomplish until 1955.

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“Watch out. Robinson’s looking for you.”

Elian Herrera came to Arizona to work…He was born in the Dominican Republic. He has dark skin, and though he speaks English, he does so deliberately, in a way that reveals that his first language in Spanish. In Los Angeles, Herrera is a backup outfielder with the Dodgers. Here at spring training, he’s the type of guy who could arouse “reasonable suspicion.” A person who’s “reasonably suspicious,” according to Arizona’s immigration law, is one who looks like he or she might be in the United States illegally…The Arizona law, known as SB 1070, went into effect in September. Six months later, half the players in baseball have reported to the greater Phoenix area. More than one-quarter of those players are Latino…Talk to Latino players in Arizona and you find them constantly patting their pockets for licenses, green cards, passports. “I carry them all the time,” says Martin Prado, a Venezuelan-born third baseman with the Diamondbacks. “Just in case. You never know.”

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art:

Elian Herrera…leaps over a sliding Shane Robinson…of the St. Louis Cardinals as he…completes a double play…May 2012, Los Angeles, California.

“The biggest issue is the lack of virtually any minorities in college baseball…”

Hall of Famer Darryl Strawberry (second to last, middle row) was born on this day in 1962.

Can one make the case that Mariano Rivera is the best pitcher of all time?

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art: drawing by Time Souers

more, plus trailer, here.

I’m hoping someday that some kid, black or white, will hit more home runs than myself. Whoever it is, I’d be pulling for him. —Hank Aaron

Henry ‘Hank’ Aaron was born on this day in Mobile, Alabama, in 1934.

[on the move]

Supreme Court Justice and Bronx native Sonia Sotomayor…at this afternoon’s Yankees-Orioles game…

more at NYMag.

…with archival footage and John Leguizamo’s narration, the docu concisely establishes the well-known facts—not just the importance of baseball to Dominicans as a ticket out of poverty, but also the importance of Dominicans to baseball; they rep 20% of all professional players in the U.S.

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“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”—Leroy (Satchel) Paige. He died on this day in 1982, in Kansas City Missouri. Paige was…

…one of the folk heroes of baseball’s old Negro leagues who became a rookie pitcher in the major leagues at the age of 42. He was believed to be 75 years old when he died…

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art: photo by George Strock of Satchel Paige waiting for pool hall adversary in Harlem, New York, 1941