Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 440

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(SPORTS--GOLF.) The Golf Observer and Social World. Volume 2, Number 2. Numerous illustrations. 44 pages. 4to, 10 x 6 inches, illustrated color wrappers; minimal wear, inked names on rear wrapper. New York, April 1960
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Additional Details

A magazine dedicated to Harlem society, and the growing Black golf scene across the nation (in 1961, Charlie Sifford would become the first African-American to get a Professional Golf Association tour card). Contents include an editorial in favor of a Harlem business association, and columns on fashion and local charity events. Most of the magazine covers amateur golf in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The majority of featured golfers are African-American, and a few are Jewish--another group excluded from the private clubs at that time. Photographs of Sugar Ray Robinson and Jackie Robinson add celebrity appeal. The rear cover is a beer advertisement featuring Jackie Robinson and fellow baseball star Monte Irvin.

The only mention we can find of the magazine under this original name is their sponsorship of a fashion show at New York's Belmont-Plaza Hotel to benefit the Goodson Foundation for Children (California Eagle, 21 April 1960). The publisher Roosevelt Goodson (1910-1977) was described in the New York Age of 10 January 1959 as a "golf enthusiast" and "wealthy Bronxite." He soon changed the name of the magazine to "On the Ball," described as "a magazine for local golfers and members of minority groups who are not likely to be found on the fairways of private golf clubs" (Mount Vernon Argus, 7 December 1970). No other examples of any issue under either name traced in OCLC or at auction.