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Book Review: Baseball's First Indian - Louis Sockalexis: Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian

BASEBALL’S FIRST INDIAN: Louis Sockalexis: Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian
By Ed Rice
Tide-Mark Press, 2003 $24.95
176 pp.

After years of being little more than a baseball trivia question (Who was the first Cleveland Indian), nineteenth-century outfielder Louis Sockalexis has become the subject of three major biographies within the past year. (we will be reviewing them all in upcoming weeks).

All three books are excellent giving the reader a glimpse into the rough-and-tumble world of early major league baseball, where players didn’t hesitate to trip each other with their spikes and many a game ended in fisticuffs and showers of rotten vegetables from the stands.

Maine author Ed Rice, born in Brookline and raised in Bangor, is a marathoner and journalist who has spent nearly two decades researching the Sockalexis story because he felt it was worth telling. Sadly, publishers weren’t interested until this year, causing his book to appear last on the list. “Baseball’s First Indian” details all the exciting play-by-plays of Sockalexis’s brilliant but too-short career. Handsome and easygoing, Louis Sockalexis became known as the nation’s best athlete during his two years at Holy Cross, where he excelled in baseball, football, and track. He posted batting averages of .436 and .444, and once made a throw from the outfield measured at 414 feet. In 1897 he was signed to the Cleveland team, then called the Spiders, and faced intense scrutiny from the press and fans, then known as “cranks.”

Fifty years before Jackie Robinson, Sockalexis broke the color barrier in major league baseball as the first acknowledged Indian player, and like Robinson, had to put up with endless racial taunting, stereotyping, and harassment from his fellow players. Unlike Robinson, Sockalexis lacked the toughness to withstand the pressure. Although there is evidence of his drinking in college, it destroyed his hot hitting and fielding after only four months in Cleveland, and his career sputtered to a halt. He played fractions of the 1898 and 1899 seasons before being released to the minor leagues, where he drank himself from one team after another. Nonetheless, he occasionally showed flashes of his old dazzling speed and he never lost his powerful throwing and hitting. He managed to play a solid, complete season with the Lowell team before returning home to Indian Island, Maine, where he coached Penobscot youths, eventually sending five of them to the New England league.

As a fellow Mainer, Rice is able to offer a local angle, enriching his story with interviews with those who knew “Sock” (“the nicest man I ever met,” says one) and recount colorful anecdotes such as Sockalexis throwing a ball across the Penobscot River on a bet, and tricking a runner with a baseball hidden in a secret pocket. His wild carousing days apparently behind him, he even sang in his church choir. Respected as an umpire and well loved by his family and tribesmen, Louis Sockalexis operated the island ferry and worked as a logger in the Maine woods until his death in 1913 at the age of 42.

Rice also examines the controversy over the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo mascot, and their dubious claim that they took their current name in honor of Sockalexis. He is able to demonstrate that while this was mostly a PR stunt in keeping with the custom of naming teams after Indians (Boston Braves, for example), the fact that they had some of their finest moments during the rookie year of Louis Sockalexis suggests that he was indeed the inspiration for the name. We also have Rice to thank for the induction of both Louis Sockalexis and his second cousin, marathoner Andrew Sockalexis, into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000.

This is a fascinating and extensively researched book, well worth the wait!

Give this one 3 out of 4 balls and call it well worth the read.

Our Rating System is based on a four ball system as follows:
One Ball: Average. It has something to say but is nothing special.
Two Balls: Something men usually have - also means its a cut above average, and worth reading/owning.
Three balls: Stands out from its peers and is highly recommended.
Four Balls: More than just what two men have when hanging out together, it means it is an exceptional book that truly earns a walk - straight to the local book store to get a copy.

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