Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Audiobook12 hours
Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race
Written by Larry Colton
Narrated by Fleet Cooper
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
"Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings in Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
1963
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
1963
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.
Unavailable
Related to Southern League
Related audiobooks
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5William Bonin: The True Story of The Freeway Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Baseball's Color Barrier: The Story of African Americans in Major League Baseball, Past, Present, and Future Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On the Shoulders of Giants, Vol 3: Basketball Comes to Harlem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball's Golden Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Depraved: A True Story of Sadistic Muder in the Heartland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whispers of the Gods: Tales from Baseball's Golden Age, Told by the Men Who Played It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrank and Jesse James in the Civil War: The History of the Bushwhackers Who Became Outlaws of the Wild West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys: Surviving Brooklyn's Colombo Mob Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/538 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Negro Leagues: Celebrating Baseball's Unsung Heroes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Baseball Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Life's Work: The Brotherhood of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angry Black White Boy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speeches by Martin Luther King Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dead River Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder on Maryland's Eastern Shore: Race, Politics and the Case of Orphan Jones Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMurderers' Row: Original Baseball Mysteries: Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Baseball For You
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mind Gym: An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mantle: The Best There Ever Was Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/562: Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees, and the Pursuit of Greatness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fall from Grace: The Truth and Tragedy of “Shoeless Joe” Jackson Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/542 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball's Afterlife Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Doc: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Long Shot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Southern League
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
4 ratings0 reviews