The first Native American to play major-league baseball was Louis Sockalexis from the Penobscot Tribe in Maine. He played in 1897 with the Cleveland Spiders. To date, there have been 43 Natives who have completed their big-league careers, each of whom is featured in a full SABR biography. There are currently four others playing in the majors, all of whom are recognized in this book.
Needing appropriate criteria, we have chosen to feature those players who were enrolled citizens of federally recognized Tribes, as listed by the Office of Federal Acknowledgement in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, part of the US Department of the Interior.
In this volume, we also offer more than a dozen essays related to baseball and Native and Indigenous communities, providing background ranging from the Indian boarding schools of more than 100 years ago to current events such as the Cleveland Guardians electing to adopt their new name.
-Rob Daugherty/Cherokee Nation
Edited by Rob Daugherty and Bill Nowlin
Associate Editors Len Levin and Carl Riechers