Beautiful writing, Mr. Gittell. Ties together a lot of loose ends for this baseball nerd and poseur cinephile!
I watched The Great White Hope on Monday night since I had only seen it once, not in entirety, on PBS once over 20 years ago. It was something one felt compelled to sit with the day after Miami Dolphins footballers Tyreek Hill and Calais Campbell took the brunt of racist police brutality.
Deep cut, but there is a reference to baseball's, um, fraught, history in The Great White Hope. Jones's Jack Jefferson sneaks out of the United States by taking another man's identity and crossing the border with a Black baseball team called, wait for it, "the Detroit Blue Jays."
Amused me ... the Tigers do have a big fanbase up in southwest Ontario, and at the time the Toronto Blue Jays were but a gleam in a few well-connected men's eyes. But the Tigers once had their Double-A Eastern League affiliate in London, Ont. ... also hometown of the former Blue Jays all-star Paul Quantrill (father of Cal Quantrill), and longtime Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston attended university there.
What a remarkable coda to your book. It also makes me very sad.
Beautiful writing, Mr. Gittell. Ties together a lot of loose ends for this baseball nerd and poseur cinephile!
I watched The Great White Hope on Monday night since I had only seen it once, not in entirety, on PBS once over 20 years ago. It was something one felt compelled to sit with the day after Miami Dolphins footballers Tyreek Hill and Calais Campbell took the brunt of racist police brutality.
Deep cut, but there is a reference to baseball's, um, fraught, history in The Great White Hope. Jones's Jack Jefferson sneaks out of the United States by taking another man's identity and crossing the border with a Black baseball team called, wait for it, "the Detroit Blue Jays."
Amused me ... the Tigers do have a big fanbase up in southwest Ontario, and at the time the Toronto Blue Jays were but a gleam in a few well-connected men's eyes. But the Tigers once had their Double-A Eastern League affiliate in London, Ont. ... also hometown of the former Blue Jays all-star Paul Quantrill (father of Cal Quantrill), and longtime Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston attended university there.
I'm Torontonian and didn't know any of that about the Jays. Our team doesn't have a lot of history (yet) but thanks for that little snippet.