Text Leveling System

We Are The Ship

RDQ:	1887	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	1434		Diff Words	548
Lex	880	Ave Word/.Sent	16	Hi Freq occurs	921	64.2%	Hi freq	199	36.3%
AR	4.8	Long Sentences	31.8	Low Freq occurs	127	8.9%	Low freq	96	17.5%

FOREWORD
From the time I can remember, baseball has been my passion. Even when I did not have a bat and ball to play with, my friends and I learned to improvise. We made baseballs out of old rags or balled-up tin cans, and we play with broomsticks for bats and hit bottle tops for practice. Little (lid I know then that I was preparing myself to one day play in the major leagues.
I was honored when I received the call from super talented artist Kadir Nelson, asking me to write the forward for his new book. We Are the Ship: The story of negro league Baseball pays tribute to the men and women, hard work and dedication helped black  like me make it into the big leagues. Kadir's powerful paintings eloquently bring this era to life and speak volumes about the old Negro Leagues.
Of course, I was reminded that during the twenties, thirties, and most of the forties, the Negro baseball leagues were the only teams that a black baseball player could aspire to play for. While many of us daydreamed about playing major league baseball, it was not until Jackie Robinson integrated the majors that I began to think that maybe there was hope for me. Up until Jackie signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, I had set my sights on what was available to me-the Negro Leagues.
I traveled with the Indianapolis clowns up and down the East Coast by bus, sometimes playing two or three games a day. We played baseball almost every day. practically living on the bus. Some of the older players would tell stories to us rookies about the legendary ballplayers who had played in the Negro Leagues, like Satchel Paige, "Cool Papa Bell, and the mighty batter Josh Gibson.
After a few months with the Clowns, I was offered a spot with the major league Boston Braves. It was an opportunity I wasn't about to pass up. I signed with the Braves farm team that spring and was called up to the majors after they moved to Milwaukee two years later. I had finally realized my dream. I knew that if I wanted to stay around. being a black ballplayer. I had to do twice as much and work twice as hard. I felt I owed it to myself, to Jackie Robinson, and to all of those black players who came before me to give it everything I had.
Although I played in the Negro Leagues for a relatively short time. the experience meant a lot to me because it gave me an opportunity to play high-class baseball and develop my skills as a professional. When I read these stories and look at the artwork. I am flooded by memories of years past and grateful for Kadir's fresh approach to the subject. I know that I wouldn't have made it in baseball had these legends not paved the way for me.
-Hank Aaron Atlanta, georgia may 2007
1st Inning Beginnings
I ain't ever had a job, I jus always played baseball." - Satchel Paige
Seems like we've been playing baseball for a mighty long time. At least as long as we've been free. Baseball's the best game there ever was. It's a beautifully designed game that requires a quick wit, a strong body, and a cool head. They say baseball was invented by a fellow named Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York, back in the 1800s, but that is just another tall tale, 'cause no one really knows for sure. But one thing is for sure: soon after that. you could find a baseball game being played just about everywhere in this grand of country of ours. Particularly in the big cities like New York and Chicago. People of all types loved to play and watch the game: Irish, Italian. German, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and African American (but back then we were called Negro or colored). Every neighborhood and every town had a team, and they would all play one another. Before long, there were professional team and organized leagues.
In the mid-1860s, most professional baseball teams had only white ballplayers. There were a number of Negroes who did play, though they weren't treated any better than most Negroes in the country at the time. Truth is, those fellows were treated downright disgracefully. They were called just about every horrible name in the book, and then some. Several teams wouldn't play another team if it had a Negro on the roster; and in some states, Negroes weren't allowed to play at all. When we did play, we got the wrong directions from our manager and were targets for opposing pitchers and base runners, which was a dangerous thing, because back in those days, no one wore any type of protective gear-not even the catcher. Well, that was until Bud Fowler, the first Negro to play professional baseball. came along. Too many times he was forced to leave the field on crutches after being spiked by a base runner. Now, this was a terrible thing, but some good came out of it. His scarred shins gave him the idea to attach wooden staves from a barrel to his legs for protection. They were the first shin guards and the first protective gear in baseball. They just about saved his legs and his baseball career - or what was left of it, anyway. And don't you know that those white fellows tried like the dickens to break his shin guards. It just gave them a little more ambition to slide feet first when a Negro was covering the base.
Despite the cruel treatment Negroes received, there were a few who became quite good ballplayers. Like brothers Welday and Moses Fleetwood Walker, Charlie Grant, Pete Hill, Sol White, Grant "Home Run" Johnson, Ben Taylor, and Frank Grant. These fellows were great ballplayers by any measure. But none of that mattered 'cause they were still Negroes, and most white ballplayers didn't want to play alongside them.
By the late 1800s, Negroes began to disappear from professional baseball teams and were soon gone from them altogether. Now, there was never any written rule that prohibited Negroes from playing professional baseball, but soon after 1887, somehow Negroes all over couldn't get on a professional baseball team. Come to find out that all the white owners had gotten together in secret and decided to do away with Negroes in professional baseball. They agreed not to add any more to their teams and to let go of the ones they had. Called it a "gentlemen's agreement." And I'll tell you this, the white pro ball club owners held to that agreement for almost sixty years.
So what were we Negroes left to do? We loved to play baseball, and a lot of guys had genuine talent. Sure, we could play against small semi pro teams, which paid little, if at all; or swallow our pride and get a job working in some factory, but who wanted to do that? Especially after tastin' the fruits of what professional baseball had to offer. We had no choice but to start our own professional teams - our own leagues.
And that's just what we did.
In the early 1900s.there were many Negro baseball teams all over the Northeast and the South. Soon after the Great Migration of Negroes from the southern states to northern cities during the twenties, Negro baseball began to grow. Negroes tried several times to organize professional leagues, but they never lasted long because they didn't have the money or the leadership to stay in business.
Then came Rube.
Andrew "Rube" Foster was an old-time trick pitcher who'd come up from the Texas leagues. He was a preacher's son who called everybody "darlin'". Like most ballplayers in his day, he bounced 'round from team to team before he landed in Chicago with the Leland Giants (who later became the Chicago American Giants), where he bot played and managed. Back then, managers almost always played, because the owners couldn't afford to pay a man to just sit in the dugout.
Rube was a master. A brilliant man. He knew baseball like the back of his black hand, and more important, he knew how to win. He was a demanding manager, and only wanted ballplayers who would follow his instructions. If a ballplayer didn't listen to Rube, he didn't last long. His players had to be able to bunt the ball into a hat - consistently! All of 'em were fast, and if they got on base, it was over. They'd steal your shirt.

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Simple

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Headings

Mature concepts: With common experiences or clear fantasy

Features

Integral Setting - Historical

Author Bias

Mood/tone

First Person

Topic

Baseball

*Movement & Sports

*Feelings, Behaviors

Prejudice

Low Frequency Words

alongside	ambition	approach	aspire	available
bot	broomsticks	bunt	consistently	cruel
daydreamed	dedication	designed	despite	dickens
disgracefully	dodgers	downright	eloquently	era
fellow	fellows	fleetwood	foreword	forties
foster	fowler	gentlemen's	german	gibson
grant	grateful	honored	improvise	indianapolis
inning	instructions	integrated	irish	jus
leadership	league	leagues	legendary	legends
leland	major	majors	manager	managers
mattered	measure	memories	migration	milwaukee
negroes	neighborhood	northeast	northern	opportunity
opposing	organized	owed	paige	particularly
passion	practically	preacher's	professional	prohibited
protection	protective	puerto	relatively	requires
rican	robinson	rookies	roster	rube
satchel	scarred	shins	sol	southern
spiked	staves	swallow	tastin	taylor
thirties	treatment	tribute	twenties	volumes
who'd