Southern League
A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
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3.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Bestselling and award-winning author and former major league pitcher Larry Colton shares the story of the Birmingham Barons, the first racially-integrated team of any sport in the state of Alabama, just few months after the horrific 1964 Birmingham church bombing which killed four young black girls.
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former pro pitcher Colton, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies, tells the story of the Southern League's 1964 Birmingham Barons, the first integrated sports team in Alabama, as they competed at the height of the civil rights protests. Wisely, the author choses four players of varying ability: Hoss Bowlin and Paul Lindblad, two unlikely white prospects, and John "Blue Moon" Odom and Tommie Reynolds, the black talents wanting to crash the bigs. The story wouldn't be worth its salt without Colton's historically accurate portrait of Birmingham, called the most segregated city in America by Rev. Martin Luther King, with its Klan murders and bombings, rigid Jim Crow code, and resistance to racial equality. While Colton contrasts the famed personalities of City Commissioner Bill Connor and owner Charlie Finley, he never loses focus of the beleaguered manager Haywood Sullivan, his scrappy team, and their winning season, with all its ups and downs. Entertaining and painstakingly crafted, Colton's account of the Birmingham Barons is a tribute to determination and courage in the face of overwhelming adversity.
