Check out the new issue of Black Ball, A Negro Leagues Journal, edited by Leslie Heaphy, which includes (among other things) a nice biographical piece on Biz Mackey, an article on the “colored sporting fraternity” of late 19th-century Cleveland (or rather, how it was portrayed in the Cleveland Gazette), and, most relevantly to this blog, an article by Geri Strecker on the uses of digitized databases, in particular Ancestry.com, for Negro League research.  Oh, and there’s also a book review by yours truly of Severo Nieto’s Early U.S. Blackball Teams in Cuba, in which I attempt daring linguistic experiments such as beginning two straight sentences with the word “However.”

I’ll probably write up a more detailed consideration of the Nieto book, since the core of it (box score and statistics for Negro League visits to Cuba) is something I have covered extensively here, and a lot of what I have to say about it wouldn’t have really fit into the book-review format.