Born in 1871 on Maine’s Penobscot Indian reservation and nephew of a chief, Louis Sockalexis became professional baseball’s first American Indian player. Ultimately, his prowess on the diamond inspired the nickname Cleveland’s baseball team carries today. Baseball’s First Indian explores the brilliant but too-brief major league career of the "Deerfoot of the Diamond" at the end of the 1890s, describes his fall to New England’s minor leagues, and watches his final return to the reservation in Maine where he continued as a baseball coach and umpire.

Author Ed Rice’s fascinating study of the life of Louis Sockalexis is filled with game-by-game action and leavened by the flamboyant and colorful stories of nineteenth-century sportswriters who frequently invented what the truth would not supply. Every student of baseball history will treasure Baseball’s First Indian.

About the Author

In addition to teaching journalism and communication studies at the college level, Ed Rice has written theater criticism and arts commentary for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Maine Times, and Maine Public Broadcasting System’s "Maine Things Considered." In February 2000, he wrote the biographical profile of Louis Sockalexis that appears annually in the Cleveland Indians Media Guide and on the team’s web site. He also spearheaded the nomination drive that led to the induction of both Louis and Andrew Sockalexis into the national American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in Lawrence, Kansas in April 2000. His nomination led to the induction of Andrew Sockalexis into the Maine Running Hall of Fame in 1990.

Hardcover, 6 by 9 inches 176 pages, black and white 1-55949-738-6

Also available from Tide-mark: full color, wall hanging Play Ball! calendar.

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