Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People's Choice
Description
Fred “Dixie” Walker was a gifted ballplayer from a family of gifted athletes. (His father, uncle, and brother all played major league baseball.) Dixie Walker played in the majors for 18 seasons and in 1,905 games, assembling a career batting average of .306 while playing for the Yankees, White Sox, Tigers, Dodgers, and Pirates. Walker won the 1944 National League batting title, was three times an All-Star, and was runner-up for Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1946. He was particularly beloved by Brooklyn Dodgers fans, to whom he was the “People’s Choice.” But few remember any of those achievements today. Dixie Walker—born in Georgia, and a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, for most of his life—is now most often remembered as one of the southerners on the Dodgers team who resented and resisted Jackie Robinson when he joined the ball club in 1947, as the first African American major leaguer in the modern game. Having grown up in conditions of strict racial segregation, Walker later admitted to being under pressure from Alabama business associates when, in protest, he demanded to be traded away from the Dodgers. Written by a professional sportswriter knowledgeable of the era and of personalities surrounding that event, and Dixie Walker’s daughter, this collaborative work provides a fuller account of Walker and fleshes out our understanding of him as a player and as a man. Walker ultimately came to respect Robinson, referred to him as “a gentleman,” and gave him pointers, calling him “as outstanding an athlete as I ever saw.”
Praise for Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People's Choice
"[Dixie Walker of the Dodgers] tells only a smal, though an interesting, part of the history of what was once called 'America's pastime,' and the numerous stories explain the popularity of baseball to a large swath of the American public."--Alabama Heritage
“This book tells a story that needs to be told. . . . [It] provides an important summary of a player who had a Hall-of-Fame-level career on the baseball field, played a major role in developing the players’ pension plan, and also played a pivotal role in one of the most important events shaping American culture in the 20th century.”—Larry Powell, author of Bottom of the Ninth: An Oral History on the Life of Harry ‘The Hat’ Walker
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“Presented with an opportunity to contextualize — if not change — her father’s nonplaying legacy, [Susan Walker] has added her name to a book written by the veteran sports journalist Maury Allen. With the publication of Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People’s Choice Allen and Walker hope readers will better understand the complexities of the time.”—New York Times Review of Books
