NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

Thoughts of Atlantic City conjure up images of an East Coast version of Las Vegas or the New Jersey equivalent of Coney Island. If one is motion picture and television-savvy, one may recall the 1981 Louis Malle-Burt Lancaster-Susan Sarandon film which is named for the city or the more recent HBO series Boardwalk Empire. But there is more to Atlantic City than casinos and sand. It also has been a baseball town, a subject that is explored in James E. Overmyer’s Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic [End Page 197] City, 1916–1929, a concise, meticulously researched year-by-year account of the on- and off-the-field history of one specific pre-integration baseball nine.

Black Ball’s chronology begins in 1916 with the arrival in Atlantic City of eight African American ballplayers, all members of the Duval Giants of Jacksonville, Florida, who headed north to become the nucleus of what “quickly became one of the dominant squads in the hotbed of semi-pro and amateur baseball around the city” (9). The team was named for Harry Bacharach, then an Atlantic City mayoral wannabe, and local politics are a constant presence in the book. Overmyer smartly observes that Bacharach “seems to have been the kind of fellow who could lie down with dogs and get up with very few fleas” (11); this may be all one needs to know about the personalities of politicos like Bacharach. Overmyer adds, “The birth of the Bacharach Giants provided Harry Bacharach with the sort of political advertising he couldn’t have bought at any price” (13). Boardwalk Empire aficionados will note that “Mayor Harry Bacharach” appears in five episodes of the series. Another Atlantic City politico cited by Overmyer is Enoch “Nucky” Johnson; a fictionalized version of Johnson, whose surname is changed to “Thompson,” is the central Boardwalk Empire character. A photo of the real “Nucky” appears in Black Ball (190)—and he looks nothing like actor Steve Buscemi.

The Giants’ history is one of accomplishment; the team won two Eastern Colored League championships during the 1920s. But there also is turmoil; the team at one point briefly split in half, with one squad becoming the New York Bacharach Giants and the other remaining in Atlantic City. Beyond reporting the Giants’ plight, Overmyer cites game accounts along with the increases or decreases in team productivity and the makeup of the Giants’ various opponents, which included Negro League-level teams, white all-star squads, and semi-pro and industrial nines. Equally telling, however, is the information that is unreported. Overmyer notes, “In 103 discovered games (played in 1919) the Bacharachs won 73, lost 29, and tied one, an enviable winning percentage of .716” (58). The key word here is “discovered.” It serves as a reminder that not all games featuring black teams were tracked, recorded, or covered in the media. Those that weren’t are lost to the annals of history, and one only can wonder what might have occurred in the games that remain “undiscovered.”

Overmyer also cites the comings and goings of the Giants players, who they were and the impact they had (or didn’t have) on the team. He emphasizes the make-up of Negro ball clubs in general by noting that, in 1918, “the Bacharach roster was in a constant state of flux. The team employed 50 different players, 24 for only one game each” (43). However, certain ballplayers were significant contributors to the team. One was shortstop Dick Lundy, who eventually became the Giants player-manager. Lundy was one of the Negro Leaguers [End Page 198] who was nominated for Baseball Hall of Fame induction in 2006, but he did not make the cut. Intentionally or not, Black Ball promotes Lundy as a worthy Hall of Fame candidate; Overmyer describes him as “among the very best ever to put on a Bacharachs uniform,” a...