Baseball's Great Experiment

Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Jules Tygiel

Drawing on dozens of interviews with players and front office executives, contemporary newspaper accounts, and personal papers, Tygiel provides the most telling and insightful account of Jackie Robinson's influence on American baseball and society. The anniversary issue features a new foreword by the author.

Baseball's Great Experiment

Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Jules Tygiel

Description

In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Jules Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson's crossing of baseball's color line. Examining the social and historical context of Robinson's introduction into white organized baseball, both on and off the field, Tygiel also tells the often neglected stories of other African-American players--such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron--who helped transform our national pastime into an integrated game. Drawing on dozens of interviews with players and front office executives, contemporary newspaper accounts, and personal papers, Tygiel provides the most telling and insightful account of Jackie Robinson's influence on American baseball and society. The anniversary issue features a new foreword by the author.

Baseball's Great Experiment

Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Jules Tygiel

Author Information

Jules Tygiel, a native of Brooklyn, is Professor of History at San Francisco State University and founder of the Pacific Ghost League. He is the author of The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties.

Baseball's Great Experiment

Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Jules Tygiel

Reviews and Awards

"Rich, intelligent cultural history.... The effect of Mr. Tygiel's lively narrative is to make us realize, or remind us in case we've forgotten, what a remarkable impact Rickey's experiment had on baseball." --The New York Times

"Not only is this a book that is long overdue, but it turns out to be a book that is well worth the wait; it is comprehensive, perceptive, balanced--and into the bargain it is eminently readable." --Washington Post Book World

"Gives us the first in-depth, fully rounded picture of the successful integration of major league baseball." --The New Republic

"A thumpingly good baseball book." --Chicago Sun-Times

Baseball's Great Experiment

Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Jules Tygiel

From Our Blog

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey

15 April 2013 marked the fifth Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event which broke baseball's racial barrier. In each game that is now played on 15 April, all players wear Jackie Robinson's iconic #42 (also the title of a new film on Robinson). Thirty years ago, historian and ardent baseball fan Jules Tygiel proposed the first scholarly study of integration in baseball, shepherded by esteemed Oxford editor, Sheldon Meyer: Baseball's Great Experiment.

Posted on April 19, 2013

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