Steve Hoffbeck contributes chapter to a book on baseball history

Image is from Amazon.com, accessed on September 4, 2012.

Steve Hoffbeck, History, contributed a chapter to a new book on baseball history entitled The National Pastime, 2012: Short But Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State, a June publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

The book, available on Amazon.com and other online booksellers, tells the history of baseball in Minnesota from the 1870s to modern times. Hoffbeck co-wrote a chapter, “On the Wrong Side of the Color Line in Minnesota: Pitcher John Donaldson,” with Peter Gorton, a baseball writer from Minneapolis. The chapter outlines the history of black baseball in Minnesota and then focuses on John Donaldson, the best left-handed African-American barnstorming pitcher of the pre-Negro Leagues era. Donaldson was a predecessor of the legendary Hall of Famer pitcher, Satchel Paige.