Phil Dixon's American Baseball Chronicles Great Teams: The 1931 Homestead Grays, Volume I

About the Book

The "Greatest Baseball team of all-time" easily describes the 1931 Homestead Grays. They remain a team never to be forgotten—a team that rates with the greatest teams in all of baseball history. Organized in 1910, baseball’s Homestead Grays of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—an exclusively African-American team—held claim to a regional championship and also a legitimate claim to baseball’s World Championship. The Grays’ well-known leader was Hall of Famer Cumberland “Cum” Posey. His 1931 Grays featured among others; Hall of Fame third baseman Jud Wilson, Hall of Fame infielder Oscar Charleston, a Hall of Fame catcher in Josh Gibson and two Hall of Fame pitchers in Willie Foster and Joseph “Smokey Joe” Williams—a total of five legendary players. Paced by young Josh Gibson, age 18 and the most powerful home run hitter in baseball, Posey’s 1931 Homestead Grays finished with a magnificent 143-29-2 record. This is their story told here for the first time. Included within the text are written accounts for every game from the Homestead Grays’ entire 1931 schedule of nearly 175 contest, with scores, attendance figures and player biographies. The work includes score and locations on more than 300 additional games played by the Kansas City Monarchs, Hilldale, Baltimore’s Black Sox, the Cuban House of David, New York’s Harlem Stars and other African-American teams in operation during that same 1931 season. The comparative scores and their related histories are a resourceful and entertaining aid for further analysis and assessment on the participation of African-American athletes in baseball as best represented from the perspective of a single championship season.

About the Author

Author Phil S. Dixon is a pioneer in the study of Negro League baseball history. For the past thirty years he has recorded the African-American baseball experience with a vast array of skill and accuracy. Creative, innovative and detailed, Dixon has researched baseball history and documented the careers of Negro Baseball’s greatest players.

Widely regarded for his expertise on baseball, Dixon has authored seven previous books. He has won the prestigious Casey Award for the Best Baseball Book of 1992, and a SABR MacMillan Award for his excellence in baseball research.

Formerly an Assistant Director in the Public Relations Department of the Kansas City Royals American League baseball team, he currently serves on the Board of Governors for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, an organization which he co-founded in 1990, and actively lectures on baseball topics.

Phil S. Dixon was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and currently resides in Belton, Missouri, with wife Kerry and their three children, Joseph, Erika and Phillip. Dixon can be reached at www.Americanbaseballchronicles.com