a minor league chronicle of the sixties
In 1965 George Gmelch signed a contract to play professional baseball with the Detroit Tigers. He had grown up sheltered in an all-white affluent San Francisco suburb and knew little of the world outside. He came of age in baseball's minor leagues and became conscious of race and class for the first time as he traveled the United States against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, civil rights protests, and the emergence of the counterculture and he experienced the consequences of the times firsthand as he played out his career in the Jim Crow South. After his minor league experiences, George Gmelch became a well-known anthropologist.
