Native American baseball players from the major leagues featured in exhibit at Iroquois Museum

Many baseball fans don't realize that there have been dozens of players -- including big names -- with full or partial Native American heritage who have played in the big leagues.

Beginning with Louis Sockalexis, who played with the Cleveland Spiders for three seasons beginning in 1897. (Ironically, the team in Cleveland is now called the Indians, which has along with Atlanta's Braves been the subject of criticism of the appropriateness of such names.) Sockalexis was a member of Maine's Penobscott; his baseball career was short-lived, and except for his being the first Cleveland Indian (pun intended), unremarkable.

These players and more are the subject of an exhibit called Baseball's League of Nations: A Tribute to Native American Baseball Players, which is currently on display at the Iroquois Museum in New York -- not too far from Cooperstown, home of the official Baseball Hall of Fame.

Decades before Jackie Robinson, Native American players blazed a haphazard, difficult trail through baseball, including players such as Bucky Dent and Johnny Bench. These days, the tradition lives on and has been brought closer to the forefront than ever before, thanks to one of baseball's hottest current stories: the rivalry between Jacoby Ellsbury, a New York Yankee of Navajo descent, and Joba Chamberlain, a half-Winnebago who pitches for Yankee arch-enemies the Boston Red Sox.

The exhibit will run until December 2008, and makes an excellent companion piece to a visit to Cooperstown.

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