From the NYTs:
HOWES CAVE, N.Y. (AP) — Long before Jackie Robinson endured torrents of racial taunts in breaking baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Louis Sockalexis had a bull’s-eye on his back.
From the day in 1897 when he first put on a uniform for the Cleveland Spiders, Sockalexis took more than his share of racial slurs.
“If the small and big boys of Brooklyn find it a pleasure to shout at me, I have no objections,” Sockalexis told The Brooklyn Eagle during his rookie season. “No matter where we play, I go through the same ordeal, and at the present time, I am so used to it that at times I forget to smile at my tormentors.”
Sockalexis figured the tormenting was just part of the game. A Penobscot Indian from Maine, Sockalexis is considered the first player of American Indian descent to make it to the major leagues. (James Madison Toy played with Cleveland a decade earlier and was said to be of Sioux ancestry, but he never publicly acknowledged his Indian heritage and his 1919 death certificate lists his race as white.)
Sockalexis’s story is one of many chronicled in “Baseball’s League of Nations: A Tribute to Native Americans in Baseball,” an exhibit on display through the end of the year at the Iroquois Indian Museum here. The exhibit features photographs and artifacts, many on loan from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in nearby Cooperstown.
“There’s never been an exhibit like this before,” said Mike Tarbell, 61, an Akwesasne Mohawk who serves as an educator at the museum. “For myself, it’s like a breath of fresh air. We’re always doing something that involves pottery or basket making or painting or sculpturing of some kind. We’ve forgotten that baseball was a part of our history as well.”
Counting the current players Joba Chamberlain (Winnebago Nation) of the Yankees, Jacoby Ellsbury (Navajo) of the Boston Red Sox and Kyle Lohse (Nomlaki Nation) of the St. Louis Cardinals, more than 50 American Indians have played professional baseball.
“We came up with a lot of cool stuff that we didn’t think we were going to find,” said the museum’s curator, Stephanie Shultes, who assembled the exhibit. “It was kind of amazing, once we started, how much there really was out there, how many of these guys that you did find out about you may have never realized before were native.”
American Indians were introduced to baseball in several ways. Lewis and Clark are said to have taught an early version of baseball to members of the Nez Perce during the explorers’ trek across North America from 1804 to 1806. And in the late 1800s, American Indian prisoners of war at Fort Sill, Okla., including the Apache warrior Geronimo, played baseball.
An integral part of early attempts at formal education, religious conversion and assimilation into white society was the playing of sports like baseball at federally operated boarding schools. More than 100,000 American Indian children attended the 500 boarding schools that followed the opening of the first, in Carlisle, Pa., in 1879.
Jim Thorpe, considered by many to be the greatest athlete of the 20th century, was among those children for whom success in baseball and other sports became a source of pride. The games also provided freedom from the boarding school regime.
Sockalexis broke new ground with the Spiders. Nicknamed the Deerfoot of the Diamond, he attended college at Holy Cross, where he participated in baseball, football and track. When his baseball coach left for a similar position at Notre Dame in 1896, Sockalexis followed him. He was expelled because of problems with alcohol, but signed with the Spiders.
Sockalexis had a batting average of .313 with 3 home runs and 33 runs batted in over three seasons before injuries and more struggles with alcohol led to his release in 1899. He finished his career in the minor leagues and returned to Maine to coach youth teams.
Sockalexis’s stint at the top of the sport was brief, but it paved the way for several players.
Charles Bender, a Chippewa from Minnesota who starred on the mound for the Philadelphia Athletics, compiled 212 wins in 16 seasons. In 1953, 28 years after retiring, Bender, known as Chief, became the first American Indian elected to the Hall of Fame.
Allie Reynolds, a hard-throwing right-hander of Creek descent who was known as Super Chief, went 131-60 in eight years with the Yankees and finished his 13-year major league career in 1954 with a 182-107 record.
Pepper Martin, an Osage who starred at third base and outfield for the Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, and in 1931 was named the first Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year.
Zach Wheat, a Cherokee outfielder who starred for Brooklyn in the early 1900s and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1959.
Rudy York, a Cherokee who as a rookie catcher with the Detroit Tigers in 1937 broke Babe Ruth’s record for most homers in a month with 18. He also drove in 49 runs that month to break Lou Gehrig’s record one of most R.B.I. in a month. York finished his career with 277 home runs, 1,152 R.B.I. and a .275 average.
Jack Aker, of Potawatomi descent, spent 11 seasons as a reliever with seven teams in the majors. Since 1994, Aker has taught baseball to American Indian children in Arizona and New Mexico.
Thorpe, a Sac and Fox from Oklahoma and direct descendant of the warrior Black Hawk, who played for the Giants, Reds and Braves from 1913 to 1919. Thorpe also played in the N.F.L. and won gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in the decathlon and the pentathlon.
Turtle Talk 