all else the sea

"We are the ship; all else the sea." Rube Foster, founder of the Negro Leagues

My first research job was compiling Negro Leagues statistics from microfiche copies of the Kansas City Call. It was then that I learned that science is as well served by imagination as the fine attention to detail.

The Negro League games were a big deal within the black community, very social affairs that attracted sold-out crowds, especially with a team as good as the KC Monarchs. But the Call's coverage of the team, as were frequently other paper's coverage of teams across the nation, was somewhat limited. The stories were there, but the box scores weren't always complete. A Sunday double-header in the Negro Leagues was frequently a 9-inning game followed by a 7-inning affair. Sometimes there was a box score for the first game, but not the second. White-owned papers, such as the Kansas City Star, did not typically report on Negro League games.

Determining the winning pitcher could often be determined by reading the story line, and home runs were also frequently reported, but reconstructing a complete box scores was sometimes as much art as science. The researcher who hired me, was having people read papers in other cities and together he was trying to compile a complete set of data. It was piece work, we got paid for each game for which statistics were compiled and I didn't make much money, but it was really fun to read old newspapers about baseball games and call myself a researcher.

Memories of that brought me to the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame today to see the work of Kadir Nelson. Paintings from Nelson's most recent book, We are the Ship: The Story of the Negro Leagues have been on display at the museum since January and now that the baseball season has begun, I thought it best to see the work before it left for points beyond.

The work was grand, especially the ones where the central character loomed large in the canvas, serving as mythical creatures, like the childhood fantasy to be a professional baseball player. The work was done to illustrate a children's book and if there's anything mythical to a child, it's a great baseball player and the chance to dream that you might be one as well. Nelson also has a nice way with the adolescent children in the paintings. I think it has something to do with the perspective, frequently done at eye level, or slightly below. The heads appear to be adult size, as are the feet, and in between, the body is that of a child. It's a nice touch that shows children as being somewhere between 2 worlds and to show us that they are the mythical beings of the future.
elsewhere:
kansas city call
kadir nelson