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Fire Ant Books
Dixie Walker of the Dodgers

Dixie Walker of the Dodgers

The People's Choice

Fire Ant Books

by Maury Allen and Susan Walker

275 Pages, 24 illustrations

eBook
9780817383589
Published: July 2010

$27.95

BUY

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

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 fi rst 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.”

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. How It All Started

2. The Lingering Legend

3. The Walkers of Birmingham

4. The Walker Family Baseball Dynasty

5. Watch Out, Babe, Dixie Is Coming

6. Estelle Shea Walker

7. Arrival in Brooklyn

8. The 1941 Pennant and the 1944 Batting Title

9. Jackie’s Early Years

10. Jackie and Dixie in 1947

11. The Pennant, the World Series, and the Long Farewell

12. The Final Playing Years and a New Career

13. The Sweet Dodger Days

14. Dixie, a Baseball Lifer

15. Estelle Carries the Torch

16. History’s Verdict

Maury Allen, a seasoned sportswriter for the New York Post and Sports Illustrated, grew up in Brooklyn. His 22 books include biographies of Reggie Jackson, Joe DiMaggio, Bo Belinsky, Casey Stengel, Joe Namath, Jim Rice, and Jackie Robinson. He is well-known to the public as a frequent sports commentator on ESPN.

Susan Walker is the daughter of Dixie Walker and resides in New Jersey.

"[Dixie Walker of the Dodgers] tells only a smal, though an interesting, part of the history of what was once called 'America's pastime,' and the numerous stories explain the popularity of baseball to a large swath of the American public."--Alabama Heritage

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“This book tells a story that needs to be told. . . . [It] provides an important summary of a player who had a Hall-of-Fame-level career on the baseball field, played a major role in developing the players’ pension plan, and also played a pivotal role in one of the most important events shaping American culture in the 20th century.”

—Larry Powell, author of Bottom of the Ninth: An Oral History on the Life of Harry ‘The Hat’ Walker

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“Presented with an opportunity to contextualize — if not change — her father’s nonplaying legacy, [Susan Walker] has added her name to a book written by the veteran sports journalist Maury Allen. With the publication of Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People’s Choice Allen and Walker hope readers will better understand the complexities of the time.”—New York Times Review of Books

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