53 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 53 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s book is October 1964 by David Halberstam. This is the start of Chapter Five.

When a few years later, Marvin Miller, the labor negotiator, visited the various baseball camps during spring training for the first time to explain collective bargaining to the various players, he was quickly struck by the fact that the Cardinal camp was different from every other one he visited. The players were more relaxed, more mature, and better integrated, black with white. The friendships among the players seemed to transcend racial lines, and Miller was especially struck by the fact that not only were the players friendly with each other but their families were too. By the summer of 1964, the question of race hung heavily over the nation at large, as young blacks challenged existing segregation statutes in the South, and baseball too was going through its own period of dramatic racial change. It was now seventeen years since Jackie Robinson had broken in with the Dodgers, and had done it so brilliantly that he had not only helped lead Brooklyn to a pennant but had won the Rookie of the Year Award.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.