In the season finale, Curtis talks to Gary Gillette, an author, SABR member, and the co-founder and chair of the board of directors of Friends of Hamtramck Stadium. Hamtramck Stadium, home to the Detroit Stars, is one of five Negro League home ballparks that are still standing today. As of July 31, 2012, Hamtramck Stadium was officially placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a State of Michigan Historic Marker was dedicated at the site in 2014. Curtis and Gary talk about the...

On this week's episode, Curtis is joined by Adrian Burgos, a professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in US-Latino history. He's written two books: Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line and Cuban Star: How One Negro League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball about the history of Latinos in US professional baseball. Curtis and Adrian discuss how the history of Latino baseball intersects with the Negro Leagues. In the early 20th century, many Latino...

On today's episode, Curtis talks to Dr. Leslie Heaphy, who teaches sports history at Kent State University and has contributed to several books, including The Encyclopedia of Women in Baseball. Their topic today is the history of women in baseball, specifically Black baseball. The conversation starts with a broad history of women in the game, as spectators, reporters, and players, before moving on to the Negro Leagues, where Dr. Heaphy talks about some of the women who played the game, owned...

In the conclusion of our three-part miniseries about the rise, maintenance, and eventual fall of the color line in the American and National Leagues, Curtis is joined by Michael Lomax, an author and retired professor of sport management. They discuss the journey that led to Jackie Robinson taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, ending decades of segregation in professional baseball. But the process of integrating the AL and NL wasn't a smooth one, and it largely happened on the...

This week, we continue our three-part series on how the color line was drawn, maintained, and ultimately brought down, as Curtis speaks to Todd Peterson, a researcher and the editor of the book The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues. Todd talks about what inspired him to pursue Negro League research and the process of putting together the book with likeminded researchers. He then shares some of the statistics he's found that show how the quality of play in the Negro Leagues was on par with the...

In the first of a three part look at how the color line was established, maintained, and ultimately brought down, Curtis talks to Ryan Swanson. Ryan is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico, focused on sports history. He wrote the book When Baseball Went White, a history of the origins of baseball’s segregation and the mechanics of its implementation. Ryan and Curtis talk about how the history of early baseball, in the 1860s and 1870s, is deeply intertwined with the politics...

On this episode, Curtis talks to Gary Ashwill, a baseball historian who has studied the Negro Leagues, minor leagues, and Cuban baseball. Most relevantly, Gary is the lead researcher for Seamheads, the team that researched and assembled the Negro League statistics database that is now being hosted on Baseball Reference. Gary tells us about the difficulties and challenges faced by him and other researchers as they went about trying to piece together the record of statistics for Negro League...

On this episode, Curtis talks to Dr. Ray Doswell, the curator and education director at the Negro Leagues History Museum in Kansas City. The museum, established in 1990, has been one of the most important resources for information and history about the Negro Leagues. Dr. Doswell talks to us about how he became interested in baseball, the day-to-day operations of the museum, the surprising parallels between the era when the National Negro League was established and today, and some of his...

Today's guest is Sean Gibson, great-grandson of Hall-of-Famer Josh Gibson. The elder Gibson hit nearly 800 home runs in a historic career and he holds the record for the best single-season OPS in major league history. Sean speaks with us about how he learned about his famous great-grandfather, some of the stories his family told him about "Big Josh", his work as Executive Director of The Josh Gibson Foundation, and the movement to rename the NL MVP after Josh Gibson. You can sign the...

In June 2021, Sports-Reference dramatically expanded its database of statistics related to Negro League Baseball. However, the story of Black baseball goes beyond plate appearances and innings pitched. These Black ballplayers were major league quality but were not treated as such by the American and National Leagues. These African Americans were citizens of the United States, but were not treated as such by the government of their own country. This is The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues, a...