Playing with Tigers : a minor league chronicle of the sixties / George Gmelch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gmelch, George, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gmelch, George.

Detroit Tigers (Baseball team).

Minor league baseball--United States--Anecdotes.

Minor league baseball.

Baseball players--United States--Anecdotes.

Baseball players.

History.

United States.

Baseball--United States--History--20th century.

Baseball.

Detroit Tigers (Baseball team)--History--20th century.

Genre:

Anecdotes.

Physical Description:

xx, 263 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Minor league chronicle of the sixties

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2016]

Summary:

"In 1965 George Gmelch signed a contract to play professional baseball with the Detroit Tigers organization. Growing up sheltered in an all-white, affluent San Francisco suburb, he knew little of the world outside. Over the next four seasons, he came of age in baseball's Minor Leagues through experiences ranging from learning the craft of the professional game to becoming conscious of race and class for the first time. Playing with Tigers is not a typical baseball memoir. Now a well-known anthropologist, Gmelch recounts a baseball education unlike any other as he got to know small-town life across the United States against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, civil rights protests, and the emergence of the counterculture. The social and political turmoil of the times spilled into baseball, and Gmelch experienced the consequences firsthand as he played out his career in the Jim Crow South. Playing with Tigers captures the gritty, insular, and humorous life and culture of Minor League baseball during a period when both the author and the country were undergoing profound changes. Drawing from journals he kept as a player, letters, and recent interviews with thirty former teammates, coaches, club officials, and even former girlfriends, Gmelch immerses the reader in the life of the Minor Leagues, capturing - in a manner his unique position makes possible - the universal struggle of young athletes trying to make their way"--Publisher's website.

Contents:

Ambition for the game

Breaking in: Duluth-Superior Dukes

Wearing Kaline's pants: Jamestown Tigers

A little wildness: Jamestown Tigers

Spring training: Tiger Town

Putting up numbers: Daytona Beach Islanders

Moving up: Daytona to Rocky Mount

Double passage: the Carolinas

Southern exposure: the Rocky Mount Leafs

When the cheering stops: the Rocky Mount Leafs

Exiled: the Québec Provincial League

Lights out: Drummondville Les Royaux.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-263).

ISBN:

9780803276819

0803276818

OCLC:

925426367