Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People's Choice (Alabama Fire Ant) Review

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(More customer reviews)Review of Dixie Walker of the Dodgers
by Maury Allen with Susan Walker.
Reviewed by Pete and Patti Cohane

Two 60-something sports fans on summer vacation at the beach; a time for good books. We just finished the best read of our summer. Against the backdrop of Branch Rickey's bold move to breach the color barrier in MLB circa 1947, Maury Allen has shone the light on an unfair and significant misconception and injustice. The misconception -- that Fred "Dixie" Walker, arguably the most popular Dodger player in history -- led a Dodger player insurgency against the hiring of an African American player; namely, one Jack "Jackie" Roosevelt Robinson. The injustice -- because of this widely held belief, Dixie Walker has been barred from inclusion in MLB's Hall of Fame, an honor which Allen proves Dixie deserved both for his 18-year accomplishments as a player and equally as a primary architect of MLB's Player's Pension Fund.
Veteran sportswriter and baseball expert Allen skillfully presents his position with insightful, lively, humorous, and often poignant testimony from a plethora of eye-witnesses of this multi-layered tale. At the same time, Allen artfully weaveswonderful behind-the-scenes familial recollections by Susan Walker of her dad's simple southern roots, traditional family values, and especially the 46-year marriage and touching devotion between Dixie and the beautiful, talented Big Apple native, Estelle Shea Walker.
Consistently faithful to balanced reporting, Allen doesn't duck the realities of the American social mindset of the times, including Dixie's own admission that he would have preferred not to have a black on the team. But Walker steadfastly denied that he had circulated and signed a petition against the hiring of Robinson. An impressive procession of first-hand witnesses is presented to the reader demonstrating how many players, baseball executives, and rowdy fans were far more assertive in their disdain of Rickey's hiring a black player than the reserved, soft-spoken "Peepul's Cherce" -- the moniker awarded Walker by his adoring Brooklyn fan base between 1939 and 1947, Dixie's Dodger tenure as their right fielder.
This book is special at two levels. Firstly, any sports fan (read not only baseball fan) will be enthralled with Allen's portrait of some of baseball's most formative and meaningful years...the years when baseball was truly the "great American pastime," and when middle class citizenry took pride and strident personal ownership of their city's team. These real-life characters come alive on the pages of this book.
And while you are caught up in the drama swirling around what was most certainly baseball's most historic and formative event -- Jackie Robinson versus the white establishment -- something unexpected occurs. Allen, again calling upon Susan Walker's vivid memory, presents a riveting portrait of Fred "Dixie" Walker the man and his remarkable wife, Estelle Shea Walker...the Irish Roman Catholic girl who was excommunicated for marrying a Protestant; the beautiful young executive assistant to Sonny Werblin during his high-visibility MCA days when she left a promising career behind to become a stay-at-home housewife; the rock of consistency who clearly understood and deeply loved the decency of her southern gentleman. The sub-story of "the businesswoman with no interest in baseball and the baseball player with no interest in business" adds an element of warmth and deeper understanding of Dixie Walker, the unwitting center of the controversial vortex of cultural and social turmoil in America of the 1930's, 40's, and 50's.
"Dixie Walker of the Dodgers" will appeal across ages and genders. It is a great read for "baseball lifers" and those who simply enjoy a well-told tale.

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Fred 'Dixie' Walker was a gifted ballplayer from a family of gifted athletes. (His father, uncle, and brother all played major league baseball.) Dixie Walker played in the majors for 18 seasons and in 1,905 games, assembling a career batting average of.306 while playing for the Yankees, White Sox, Tigers, Dodgers, and Pirates. Walker won the 1944 National League batting title, was three times an All-Star, and was runner-up for Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1946. He was particularly beloved by Brooklyn Dodgers fans, to whom he was the 'People's Choice'. But few remember any of those achievements today. Dixie Walker - born in Georgia, and a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, for most of his life - is now most often remembered as one of the southerners on the Dodgers team who resented and resisted Jackie Robinson when he joined the ball club in 1947, as the first African American major leaguer in the modern game. Having grown up in conditions of strict racial segregation, Walker later admitted to being under pressure from Alabama business associates when, in protest, he demanded to be traded away from the Dodgers.Written by a professional sportswriter knowledgeable of the era and of personalities surrounding that event, and Dixie Walker's daughter, this collaborative work provides a fuller account of Walker and fleshes out our understanding of him as a player and as a man. Walker ultimately came to respect Robinson, referred to him as 'a gentleman', and gave him pointers, calling him 'as outstanding an athlete as I ever saw'.

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