[ARETE] Review of Rutter, Invisible Ball of Dreams

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find below and attached Michele Schiavone's review of Emily Ruth
Rutter, *Invisible Ball of Dreams*.
Thanks
Duncan

Rutter, Emily Ruth. *Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of
Baseball behind the Color Line*.

        Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2018. 190 pp. Notes, Works Cited,
Index.



Reviewed by Michele Schiavone, Professor Emerita, Marshall University



               In *Invisible Ball of Dreams*, African American literature
scholar Emily Ruth Rutter analyzes fiction, drama, poetry, film, and
children’s books relating to black baseball through the lens of archival
theory. She claims in the Introduction that “[t]he dissolution of black
baseball may have gone relatively unnoticed at the time, but the specter of
the segregated past continues to haunt the national pastime and the
literature that engages it” (2). This is a thoroughly researched and
engaging book that not only enlightens us about the literature and the
culture of black baseball, but also, by using the theory of the archive and
archival erasures, establishes a basis for new and exciting research in
other areas.

               First, I need to say I am not an entirely objective
reviewer--Rutter’s topic has long been one of my own interests. I had
already read most of the primary texts she deals with; I’ve given
presentations on Negro League-related literature and issues of race at
various conferences, including those of the Sport Literature Association;
and I once had a vague dream of writing a book along these lines.  On the
upside, my familiarity with all but a couple of the texts analyzed here
allows me to say that Rutter handles them with skill and sensitivity, while
enhancing my understanding of the texts in the context of Negro League
literature as a whole.

               Rutter’s introduction establishes the concept of the archive
and its importance to our perceptions. Citing Derrida, Diana Taylor and
Wendy Walters as scholars who have looked at archives critically, she
explains that archives are not objective, as someone has decided what is
worth recording and archiving. The most basic example of this in relation
to black baseball is the lack of reliable statistics. Several reasons
account for this lack, but, as Rutter claims, many black baseball
statistics have been erased by whites, who controlled the archives. But she
is concerned with more than statistics; she is also troubled by the erasure
of the black baseball *experience, *and thus examines works from successive
waves of Negro League literature, arguing that “imaginative literature
plays a key role in redressing these archival erasures” (2). However, the
literature, as Rutter points out, also reflects the dominant culture of the
time, “often express[ing] the biases that remain entrenched in baseball and
the country for which it stands” (9).

               For example, William Brashler’s 1973 novel, *The Bingo Long
Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, *in depicting a Negro League baseball
team and basing some of the main characters on prominent Negro Leaguers,
has doubtless introduced readers to an unfamiliar era in baseball history.  But
this 70s novel, in Rutter’s view, overemphasizes “comedic, spectacular
aspects of black baseball” and perpetuates “degrading stock tropes such as
the ‘magical negro.’” (10). This weakness is common in the first wave of
Negro League literature, which was written by whites.  Also part of the
first wave are Jay Neugeboren’s *Sam’s Legacy* (1974), John Craig’s *Chappie
and Me* (1979), and Jerome Charyn’s *The Seventh Babe* (1979), all of which
subordinate black characters to white ones.  Rutter argues that these
writers “mine significant gaps in archival knowledge” but also “elid[e]
and/or misrepresent. . . many lived experiences” (19).

The second wave of Negro League literature encompasses African American
writers of the 1980s and 90s, such as August Wilson (*Fences*), Gloria
Naylor (*Bailey’s Café*) and poetry by Michael S. Harper, Quincy Troupe,
Yusef Komunyakaa, and Harmony Holiday.  Rutter begins her section on the
second wave by quoting Amiri Baraka on the “laughter and self-love”
engendered by watching the Newark Eagles play.  She claims that *Fences*
fills the gaps in the archive in terms of both statistics and feelings of
what it was like to play baseball and of what it felt like to be excluded
and passed over.  Rutter also explains the connection between Negro League
baseball and African American music, specifically jazz and blues, and how
they are linked in works such as Quincy Troupe’s “Poem for My Father” and
Komunyakaa’s “Glory.”  She writes, “without the specter of the white gaze,
communities such as the one “Glory” depicts constructed their own
identities, and baseball . . . played an integral role in opposing dominant
narratives of black inferiority” (99). In his poem “Archives,” Michael S.
Harper deals with the gaps in the Baseball Hall of Fame’s archives, in
terms of both artifacts and the emotions of the lived experience of black
baseball, and suggests that poetry is one of the modes of documentation
“necessary in order to reimagine this richly variegated past” (101).  Rutter’s
section on Harmony Holiday’s collection *Negro League Baseball* looks at
the ways Holiday “mov[es] literary representations of black baseball, as
well as the homologies with blues and jazz, in new and provocative
directions” (102). Holiday’s poetry, which I was not previously familiar
with, is difficult.  I noticed that, for the most part, the quotations from
Holiday did not accurately duplicate the poet’s unconventional spacing, but
Rutter does a great job of making Holiday’s work intelligible.

               The third wave contains works by both white and African
American writers, including the novels *The Veracruz Blues* (1996) by Mark
Winegardner and *All the Stars Came Out That Night* (2005) by Kevin King,
and children’s books on black baseball. Winegardner’s novel, about the
Mexican League active in the 1940s, and King’s, about a secret game played
between Negro Leaguers and major leaguers in the 1930s, “call attention to
the power structures that have historically wielded control over what is
included and excluded from the annals and vaults of the national pastime”
(109). The novels “dispel a unilateral view of the past” by “incorporating
metafictional techniques . . . and polyvocal narration” (109).  The
children’s books that Rutter takes up teach young readers not only about
black baseball, but also about black ingenuity in the face of segregation.
After summarizing a few children’s books that place Negro Leaguers in
mentor roles, Rutter focuses on works that have strong visual components: *A
Negro League Scrapbook*, *We Are the Ship*, and the graphic novel *Satchel
Paige*. Carole Boston Weatherford uses rhymed couplets in *A Negro League
Scrapbook* to help young readers remember black baseball; she also includes
information and photos of the three women who played in the Negro Leagues.
In *We Are the Ship, *for which Kadir Nelson did the illustrations as well
as wrote the text, Nelson not only introduces children to the giants of
Negro League baseball, but he debunks some misconceptions about baseball
and black athletes (for example, that they are only physical and have no
mental ability).  Nelson also has mentoring in mind, as he “pursues a
dialogic relationship with readers that mimics a father sharing this
history with his son or daughter” (144). In *Satchel Paige*, James Sturm
and Rick Tommaso make it clear that they are teaching-- about Paige’s
baseball feats and his attitude, about the sociocultural background, and
about fathers as mentors.

 In the book’s last section, “Coda,” Rutter examines Denzel Washington’s
2016 film version of Wilson’s *Fences*. She writes, “the film leans into
the complex emotional residue that the Negro Leagues left behind,
portraying both segregation and integration as freighted with unresolved
frustration and loss” (160). This “emotional residue” brings us back to the
reason Rutter gives for writing her book.

               *Invisible Ball of Dreams *is the ideal scholarly work.
Sophisticated in its analysis and use of archival theory, it is nonetheless
accessible to students working with primary texts. While reminding readers
of the many first-rate literary works related to black baseball, Rutter’s
book also brings out the human component underlying the terms “segregation”
and “integration.”

Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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