Sunrise on the Diamond

For Native American Studies professor Joe Giovannetti, what began as a love for baseball and an initial curiosity has developed into a 10-year research project and a nearly finished book.

Giovannetti is bubbling with excitement over his book, tentatively titled "Warriors of the Diamond: Indians in Major League Baseball," which he hopes to have finished this summer. Giovannetti has a vast collection of anecdotes like that of 100-percent Cherokee pitcher, Ben Tincup, who as a 70-year-old pitching coach for the New York Yankees threw nine strikes out of ten pitches blindfolded from the mound.

"I am just so excited to print this. Indian people will be so joyous," Giovannetti said. "They have all heard about Jim Thorpe and all that he did, but this book will offer a diverse new set of Native-American athletes for Indians of all ages to learn about and be proud of."

Joe Giovanetti, an HSU professor, is currently working on a book researching Native American involvement in baseball. photo by Jennifer Hayes

Giovannetti, a mixed-blood Huss and Tolowa Indian, was born and raised in Eureka. He graduated from HSU in 1972 with a BA in journalism and later earned a Masters in educational administration. In addition, Giovannetti was also an immensely successful track and field star for HSU and was just recently elected into the HSU Athletic Hall of Fame.

Despite his success in track and field, Giovannetti and his family have always harbored a passion for baseball.

"There were a lot of baseball players in our family. My grandfather played semi- professionally as a catcher," said Giovannetti. "I was a pitcher myself up through high school."

Caught one day thinking about his grandfather's time in baseball, Giovannetti began to wonder about the hstory ofi Native-Americans in major league baseball. He first sought the help of the Baseball Encyclopedia, a reference guide as thick as four phonebooks, which carries all the profiles and stats of past major league players.

"I started by just thumbing through and looking for any former players who had the nickname of Chief," he said. "I think I found close to a dozen or so, and that's how this all began."

Since then, he's spent nearly all of his time on baseball. He's visited the Baseball Hall of Fame twice, interviewed some of the game's legendary figures such as Yogi Berra, and written to nearly 9,000 present and former major league baseball players.

"There were a couple of times when my daughter and I stayed up all night stuffing envelopes addressed to players with inquiries about their ancestry," said Giovannetti. "I didn't specify anything. They didn't have to have a certain percentage of blood or live on a reservation, they just needed to self-identify with some Indian heritage."

Fairly soon, the responses and positive feedback started flooding into his mailbox.

"I was getting messages from players that self-identified with Indian ancestry as well as those who didn't," he said. But even those who declined were so thrilled that someone had taken on the project that they recommended player's they'd met or played with who they thought might have been Native-American."

Through this extensive research, traveling, writing and telephone interviews, Giovannetti has located players with lineage to 55 different tribes spanning across a map that only National Geographic could plot. Players have self-identified with lineage from tribes in Canada, Mexico, the United States and even the Caribbean. Some players have claimed ancestry to tribes that have been presumed extinct as far back as 1570.

"I have located and met with some of nearly 50 players of Indian ancestry that played pre-1930s, players that played against Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb."