Hi, Patrons of Baseball by the book book and welcome to another bonus episode.

Today we're going to have a panel discussion of a great book. It's called Baseball's Great

Experiment, Jackie Robinson and his legacy. This was written by Jules Tygal. He unfortunately passed away in 2008.

The book was originally published in 1983. It was an honorable mention for

the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award. It's been named one of the top hundred sports

books of all time by Sports Illustrated. The Wall Street Journal named it the second best baseball

book of all time. And just recently, Sabre named it one of the top 50 books of the past 50 years. Sabre also gave

Tygal a Henry Chadwick Award for Lifetime Achievement in the field of baseball history and research.

So I want to introduce our panel to talk about this book today. We have Lisa Alexander,

who is an associate professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University.

She is the author of When Baseball Isn't White, Straight, and Male.

We have Mark R. Moore. He is the Sabre Board President and the author of several books,

including a biography of Joe Cronin. And we have Adrian Burgos Jr. who is a professor of

history at the University of Illinois. He is the author of several

books, including Playing America's Game, Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. And let's start with you,

Adrian. Can you tell us when you were first exposed to this book and what kind of influence it had on you?

Yes, thanks for having me on. It's great to be here with Lisa and Mark, who we've all have,

I think, been influenced by the work of Jules Taguel. I first read his book while starting my

undergraduate thesis when I was at Vassar College. I was writing on baseball's introduction to Caribbean

and thinking about the presence of Latinos in the major leagues.

And what blew me away in reading Jules' book the first time was that he had interviewed Negro

Ligres, Latino players.

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