Fall sports season is here

Fall sports season is underway! The Seahawks (football) kick off their season on Sept 12, the Mariners (baseball) are making a run for the playoffs, with the OL Reign (women’s soccer) likely headed to playoffs and the Sounders (men’s soccer) making a last push for a playoff spot. If all the excitement has you wanting more, delve into one of these books on the history, personalities, and art of sports.

The Forgotten First: Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Marion Motley, Bill Willis, and the Breaking of the NFL Color Barrier by Keyshawn Johnson and Bob Glauber
A year before Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the color barrier in baseball, UCLA running back Kenny Washington signed with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, breaking the color barrier in professional football. The Forgotten First chronicles the life of Washington and the other three first Black players in the NFL in 1946 (two at the LA Rams, two at the Cleveland Browns), their accomplishments, the racism they faced, and the paths they paved for the players who came after them.

Baseball Culture in Cuba

Stateside we sometimes say that baseball is as American as apple pie. Baseball is also the Cuban national sport, so you might say as Cuban as the national dish, ropa vieja. How did it start there?

In the USA, we have our myth of Abner Doubleday laying out the ballfield and explaining the rules to his sporting friends in Cooperstown, NY, back in 1839. In Cuba the myth centers on a first game in 1874 between teams from Matanzas and Havana, with the players having been taught to play by sailors from a visiting American ship in Matanzas Harbor for a repair. Yale professor González Echevarría explores the origins of Cuban baseball, and why this may be a false origin story in The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. He looks at baseball and society from the first amateur leagues in the 1860s to modern times, examining the paradox of Cuba’s love of America’s pastime while maintaining pride in national independence, including separations from Spanish and American identities.

Baseball with the Seattle Pilots

This challenging season for local baseball fans brings to mind another last place team in our fair city, the famous and short-lived Seattle Pilots of 1969. An expansion team in the American League, they played at Sicks’ Stadium, a converted minor league ballpark. In their one year here they launched Jim Bouton’s literary career through his tell-all bestselling book, “Ball Four.”

Bouton was a former All-star pitcher on the Mantle-Maris era Yankee juggernauts of the early sixties. In decline and with a sore arm,