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BaseballChronology.com: Seymour Medal Honorees for 2000

By Patrick Mondout

SABR (Society For American Baseball Research) annually awards the Seymour Medal to the best book of baseball history or biography published in the previous year. Below are the finalists and winners for 2000, including links to the book at Amazon.com for your convenience. We also have a list of all winners and finalists from 1996-2006.

SEYMOUR MEDAL FINALISTS & WINNERS
WINNER		Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 by Bill Marshall "With personal interviews of players and owners and with over two decades of research in newspapers and archives, Bill Marshall tells of the players, the pennant races, and the officials who shaped one of the most memorable eras in sports and American history." Read more...
HONORABLE MENTION		The Independent Carolina Baseball League, 1936-1938: Baseball Outlaws by R.G. "Hank" Utley and Scott Verner "Shortly after the independent Carolina League was formed in 1936, officials of the National Association of Professional Baseball—which oversaw what was known as “organized baseball,” including the major leagues—began a campaign to destroy the league. The NAPB declared the Carolina League “outlaw” and blacklisted its players because their teams were pirating professionally-contracted ballplayers with the lure of higher wages, small-town hero worship and a career off-season." Read more...
FINALIST		Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor League Baseball in the American South by Bruce Adelson "While Jackie Robinson is justly famous for breaking the color line in major league baseball in 1947, other young African-American players, among them Hank Aaron, continued to struggle for acceptance on southern farm teams well into the 1960s. As Bruce Adelson writes, their presence in the South Atlantic, Carolina, and other minor leagues represented not only a quest for individual athletic achievement; simply by hitting, fielding, and signing autographs alongside their white teammates, African-American ballplayers helped to end segregation in the Jim Crow South." Read more...
FINALIST		Chris Von der Ahe and the Saint Louis Browns by J. Thomas Hetrick "Chris Von der Ahe emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1867, and settled in St. Louis, Missouri. Starting out as a clerk in a grocery store, he succeeded quickly in buying the grocery store and establishing a saloon in the back. Although Von der Ahe had no special interest in sports, he did notice that fans liked to drop by after a ball game and have a beer." Read more...
FINALIST		A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward by Bryan DiSalvatore "No matter how far back you go, the state of the game has always been remarkably similar to what it is today: greedy owners, economic imbalances among franchises, unequal markets, grumbling players. Using the multilayered life of 19th-century Hall-of-Famer and lawyer John Montgomery Ward as his way into the story, Bryan Di Salvatore roots around in the contemporary sources of the game's early years. For the record, Ward's career on the diamond spanned from 1878 to 1894, split between shortstop and the mound. As a pitcher, he sported an impressive 164-102 mark, won a staggering 47 games in 1879, and even hurled a perfecto; at short, he fielded his position well and hit with authority if not power. "Ward was the sort of player that other players appreciate as a teammate and curse as an opponent," Di Salvatore explains. "He beat you invisibly as often as he beat you visibly." He later managed, and like DiMaggio, he wooed and wed one of the leading actresses of the day." Read more...
FINALIST		The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball by Roberto Gonzales-Echevarria "The "national" in "national pastime" is a relative term in Yale literature professor and former semi-pro catcher Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria's meticulous examination of baseball in the land of his birth. A respected scholar, Echevarria is also a fan, and he manages to weave both objectivity and appreciation throughout a carefully researched and multi-layered narrative that draws from numerous first-person reminiscences. If Echevarria's prose is dry at times, it manages to cover plenty of interesting territory as he threads the game through the fabric of Cuban history, culture, and lore." Read more...
FINALIST		Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball by Mark Rucker and Peter Bjarkman "Shrouded in mystery for decades, Cuban baseball has become the final frontier for fans of the sport in America. An unprecedented collection of photographs, statistics, and lore, Smoke explores the depth and range of the island's baseball heritage - from its origins in the 1870s, to Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb's barnstorming tours, to Fidel Castro and the Cold War that closed off access, to Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the world-champion 1998 Yankees. The combined efforts of Latin baseball's leading historian and the recognized authority on baseball images provide an exciting reading and viewing experience, bringing to life a rich baseball culture that has remained hidden." Read more...
BEST BASEBALL BOOKS OF EACH YEAR ACCORDING TO SABR