Why am I passionate about this?
I’ve loved baseball since I was six years old when I watched that ground ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs and propel my New York Mets to their second World Series. I’ve loved film for almost as long. The best way to love something is to think critically about it–put it to the test. That’s why I wrote Baseball: The Movie. It was an effort to avoid unexamined nostalgia, to think hard about these things I love, and to make sure I love them honestly. I’ve spent 10 years as a freelance writer on baseball and movies, but not until I wrote this book did I feel like they had truly passed my test.
Noah's book list on books that tell the true story of baseball
Why did Noah love this book?
This book expands the story of integration in baseball beyond Jackie Robinson. It focuses on Larry Doby and Satchel Paige, who were signed by the Cleveland Indians in the months following Robinson’s breaking of the color line.
Epplin crafts a poignant narrative that dismantles the myth of Robinson’s exceptionalism while chronicling the harassment other Black players suffered in Robinson’s wake. It’s also just an exceedingly well-crafted tale. When the fortysomething Paige, who pitched in the Negro Leagues for decades, finally gets into a major league game, I shed a tear.
1 author picked Our Team as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The riveting story of four men―Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige―whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond.
In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked…