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A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
Grand Central Publishing
May 2013
On Sale: May 14, 2013
336 pages
ISBN: 1455511889
EAN: 9781455511884
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Anybody who is familiar with the Civil Rights movement knows
that 1964 was a pivotal year. And in Birmingham, Alabama -
perhaps the epicenter of racial conflict - the Barons
amazingly started their season with an integrated team. Johnny "Blue Moon" Odom, a talented pitcher and Tommie
Reynolds, an outfielder - both young black ballplayers with
dreams of playing someday in the big leagues, along with
Bert Campaneris, a dark-skinned shortstop from Cuba, all
found themselves in this simmering cauldron of a minor
league town, all playing for Heywood Sullivan, a white
former major leaguer who grew up just down the road in
Dothan, Alabama. Colton traces the entire season, writing about the
extraordinary relationships among these players with
Sullivan, and Colton tells their story by capturing the
essence of Birmingham and its citizens during this
tumultuous year. (The infamous Bull Connor, for example,
when not ordering blacks to be blasted by powerful water
hoses, is a fervent follower of the Barons and served as a
long-time broadcaster of their games.) By all accounts, the racial jeers and taunts that rained
down upon these Birmingham players were much worse than
anything that Jackie Robinson ever endured. More than a story about baseball, this is a true accounting
of life in a different time and clearly a different place.
Seventeen years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color
line in the major leagues, Birmingham was exploding in race
riots....and now, they were going to have their very first
integrated sports team. This is a story that has never been
told.
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