Mount Pleasant Magazine July/August 2019

62 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com feature T he batter slaps a bouncer into the hole on the left side, just out of the reach of the third baseman. The shortstop, who almost always possesses the strongest arm in the infield, glides easily to his right and snatches the ball on its third hop, sets his feet and fires a bullet across the diamond. His accurate throw thuds into the first baseman’s waiting mitt, arriving at the bag a half step before the fleet runner’s foot lands on the bag. This scenario has played out in the most symmetrical of games for 175 years or so in hallowed venues such as Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field and Fenway Park and on a multitude of minor league, high school and recreational league facilities from Freehold, New Jersey; to New Boston, Texas; to Emeryville, California. Whoever determined the dimensions of a baseball diamond — and there has been great and raucous debate concerning who that genius actually was — was blessed with a prescience unmatched in the annals of sport. How could he have known, nearly two centuries ago, that a square with four 90-foot sides would always remain the perfect shape on which to play a game that would capture the imagination of a nation, serve as a testing ground for American race relations and, in East Cooper, produce fierce competition, pure joy and fond memories that remain nearly half a century after Sunday-afternoon baseball disappeared from the dusty fields of East Cooper’s African American communities? From somewhere around 1917 or 1918 — nobody seems to know for sure — until the 1970s, baseball was the most popular form of entertainment in black enclaves from Sullivan’s Island to Mount Pleasant to Cainhoy. BY BRIAN SHERMAN Looking Forward to Black Baseball East of the Cooper Sunday