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Book Review: Indian Summer- The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis

Indian Summer: The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis, The First Native American in Major League Baseball
By Brian McDonald
Rodale Press, 2003
244 pp.

“Indian Summer,” by Brian McDonald (“My Father’s Gun) reads almost like a riveting novel and sets Louis Sockalexis’ meteoric rise and fall within the historical context of the shameful treatment of Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, when Indians had been subdued and herded onto reservations. Fifty years before Jackie Robinson, Sockalexis broke the color barrier in the major leagues, but unlike Robinson, he had to blaze the trail alone.

He first came to national attention as a college athlete at Holy Cross College, where he excelled in baseball, football, and track. Leading his team in 1894 and 1895, he posted batting averages of .436 and .444, and thrilled crowds with his bullet-like throws from the outfield to the plate. Two Harvard professors once measured a throw of his at 414 feet, further than anyone in the country. In 1897 Sockalexis was signed to the Cleveland national team, then known as the Spiders. His rookie season became the stuff of legend.

Each chapter of “Indian Summer” opens with reproduced clippings from Sockalexis’ career so that the reader may get an authentic feel for the game scores, a nice sketch of “Sock,” and the sportswriters’ racially slanted headlines of the day. “Ewing’s Red Men Scalped Nicely by Tebeau’s Indians” and “The War Club Wielded Vigorously” are just two examples. The author describes the racial climate of the day, with Native American children being forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools that sought to “kill the Indian” and “save the child,” cutting their braids and forbidding them to speak their own language. The great Jim Thorpe grew up in such a school. Fortunately, Louis Sockalexis did not. Although he encountered racism all throughout his career, he quickly won over his tormentors with his easy smile and calm demeanor. Handsome and well built, towering over his teammates, he had a large female following in ballparks all around the country. Only after drink and injury destroyed his performance on the field did the crowds heap scorn on his head and even throw firecrackers at his feet.

By his own admission, McDonald fictionalizes some of the bare outlines of Sockalexis’s life, such as his famous showdown with fireball pitcher Amos Rusie of the New York Giants, who had sworn to “fan the Indian.” After four pages of suspense, the resulting home run is described in almost lyrical terms: ‘The ball creased the blue sky like a midday comet...”

Unfortunately, McDonald also seems to enjoy dwelling on the sordid details of “Sock’s” barroom brawls and carousels in brothels. He paints Sockalexis’s life in consistently tragic hues, and states that Louis drank “to forget that he was an Indian.” But the reasons for alcohol addiction aren’t always so clear-cut. Not only that, Sock never hesitated to identify himself as Penobscot, and even gently joked about it to the press. In the absence of any documentation, it becomes hard to accept fictionalized interpretations of the ruined ballplayer’s thoughts: “In the searing pain of hangover…the drumbeat of his past was impossible to deny.”

Because of this occasional tendency to play loose with the facts, I give this otherwise enjoyable book a rating of 2 balls.

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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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