Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race

by Larry Colton

"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.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, History, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, Race

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

On September 15, 1963, Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Street Church was bombed, killing four innocent girls, prompting Dr Martin Luther King, Jr to dub the city America’s most segregated. While Brown v the Board of Education had been enacted nearly a decade earlier, the South was slow to integrate any facet of society. With strong racist personalities in Bull Connor and Governor George Wallace dictating the law of the state, Alabama, and Birmingham specifically, was not a place where African Americans desired to live or even pass through. Two years earlier, Connor had shut down the Birmingham Barons minor league baseball team when the league began to integrate, citing a law known as the Checkers Law that he had helped create to prevent integration. Now, in April 1964, a mere six months after the Church bombing, Connor had been ousted from power and the Checkers Law with him. With a new Southern League starting and the Birmingham Barons set to join with an integrated team, all eyes would be on America’s most racist city.

Albert Belcher made his fortune in lumber and set out to purchase the now defunct Birmingham Barons. He poured $100,000 of his own money to renovate historic Rickwood Field built in 1902, and America’s oldest ballpark. A mere months before opening day, Rickwood Field glistened but Belcher could find no major league franchise willing to partner with him as no one wanted any part of Birmingham. Enter the eccentric Charlie Finley of the Kansas City A’s. A native Alabamian, Finley understood the magnitude of fielding an integrated baseball team in the heart of Jim Crow. He had earned a fortune selling insurance, and, while his major league team was abysmal at the time, Finley promised Belcher that he would pour money into the Barons and do whatever it took to field a winner during the Barons’ inaugural Southern League Campaign. Belcher was sold and in 1964, the integrated Birmingham Barons would be set to play at integrated Rickwood Field.

Belcher and the Ku Klux Klan had a deal that they would not meddle in the baseball business as long as he did not interfere with Klan business that occurred away from the ballpark. Congress was set to pass a historic Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964, and white southerners were on high alert. Klansmen did not desire n - - -s polluting their schools, hotels, restaurants, and other public place; yet, they left baseball alone because in the end, the Klansmen were also baseball fans, and a winning team was good for business in Birmingham. Belcher and Finley tabbed a native Alabamian from Dothan, Haywood Sullivan, to manage the team. Just a year removed from his playing days and also understanding life in the south, the braintrust believed that Sullivan would be the perfect fit to navigate 1964 Birmingham. In Sullivan, Finley saw a future major league manager and thought that Birmingham would be a good trial to test his managerial skills. All things would come together during the magical season of 1964.

True to his word, Finley provided the Barons with quality ballplayers. The team would be the training ground for future A’s who would win three World Series titles during the 1970s. Members of the championship teams including Bert Campaneris, Paul Lindblad, Tommie Reynolds, and Johnny Blue Moon Odom would play for the 1964 Barons. Author Larry Colton focused on Lindblad, Reynolds, Odom, and second baseman Hoss Bowlin as he depicted life in Birmingham from both a white and black perspective. Finley told the players of color that they had to be strong like Jackie Robinson had been and not fight back. While the Civil Rights Act has passed during the season, black players were barred from hotels, condos, and restaurants that their white teammates were free to live in and visit at their leisure. In creating a team, Sullivan would not allow white players to eat at restaurants that their teammates were barred from. In some cities like Lynchburg, Virginia, treatment was worse than others as fans threatened to literally lynch Reynolds after games. Belcher waited with baited breath all year for a calamity to befall the Barons in Birmingham at integrated Rickwood Field, yet miraculously none occurred. The biggest calamity is that the team was successful and Finley raided the roster of stars to promote to the A’s. One could see that the franchise had bigger and brighter days ahead.

While this book is dubbed Southern League about the 1964 season, it is about so much more than baseball. This micro history focuses on the last days of Jim Crow Birmingham and how the proponents and opponents of the Civil Rights Act in the city fought to either integrate it or keep it segregated. The Birmingham Barons showed that blacks and whites could play on an integrated team in harmony and bring much civic good to a city thirsty for positive headlines. In first place for much of the year, Rickwood Field even hosted the league all star game. Albert Belcher with help from Charlie Finley had created a winning product on the field, one Birmingham could be proud about. Larry Colton allowed readers to take part in the team and city’s magical ride during the summer of 1964.

4 stars

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

People of a certain age will remember Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. On the nightly news, viewers watched as the city's police force under the leadership of the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, beat Civil Rights marchers with clubs, attacked them with dogs, and sprayed them with high-pressure water hoses.

So how could they forget? In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," written after his arrest in April for marching in the city's streets without a permit, Martin Luther King wrote, "Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." President Kennedy would later state that Bull Connor did more for racial integration than anyone since Abraham Lincoln.

In late August of that year, King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Seventeen days later the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed on a Sunday morning and four little black girls died and twenty other people were injured. The bombing became a touchstone of the Civil Rights Movement, but it wasn't the only bombing of a black church in Birmingham. No, in fact it was the seventeenth in seven years. As a result, the city earned the dubious nickname, "Bombingham."

Birmingham had a long history of fielding professional baseball teams -- both black and white. However, they were segregated teams.

The Birmingham Barons played in the all-white Double-A Southern League and the Birmingham Black Barons played in the Negro League.

Few white fans ever attended the Black Barons games while the black fans who attended the Barons games were restricted to an area in the right field corner stands. A chicken-wire fence was used as the boundary that separated the two races. (In St. Louis, there was no fence separating the races, but black fans up through the 1950's were restricted to the right field bleachers in Sportsman's Park in what was called "the pavilion." Moreover, this was in the major leagues.)

At the end of the 1961 season, Major League Baseball mandated that all minor league teams be integrated. The KKK pressured Barons owner Albert Belcher to disband his team. He gave in and the whole Southern League collapsed. However, Belcher was able to get Charlie O. Finley, the colorful and often outrageous owner of the Kansas City (later Oakland) A's, to become the parent organization of a resurrected Barons team. Finley, a Birmingham native, agreed and the Southern League was reborn in 1964.

Just one year after the terrible events of 1963, the 1964 edition of the Birmingham Barons became the first integrated team -- in any sport -- in Alabama's history. The team had two black players and three Latin players on the roster when the season began. One other black player, John "Blue Moon" Odom, was added when he graduated from high school after the season began. Adding further uncertainly was the fact that the seating in the stadium would also be integrated, creating a distinct possibility that there would be conflict in the stands and the clubhouse.

The manager was Haywood Sullivan, a native of Dothan, Alabama who was in his thirties and had just retired as a player after spending seven years as a catcher with the Red Sox and A's. There was much speculation about how this rookie manager, a native of the Deep South, would deal with what could very well be a volatile situation. He had attended an all-white high school, an all-white university, and was signed to a large bonus by the Red Sox, the last major league team to have a black player on its roster, twelve years after Jackie Robinson had integrated the sport.

Larry Colton's book concentrates on Sullivan and four players. The players are Tommie Reynolds, Blue Moon Odom, Hoss Nowlin, and Paul Lindblad. In addition, Campy Campaneris would have gotten more ink, but the A's called him up during mid-season. The reader also learns about the contentious relationship that developed between Belcher and Finley. Of course, any relationship involving Finley had to be contentious. He was never involved in any other kind.

Larry Colton does a good job of covering the racial divide that plagued Birmingham during this era, but it is baseball that he knows best and it is about the game that he is the most insightful. As a former professional player himself, he has an intimate knowledge of the game and is able to transmit that knowledge to the reader. He also knows from personal experience something about the Southern League, since he pitched in that league in 1966.

In a discussion of the book on C-Span, Colton joked that he had a higher major league strikeout ratio than either Nolan Ryan or Sandy Koufax -- which is true. He pitched in only one major league game. He faced nine batters and struck out two. That means that he struck out almost one-fourth of all the batters he faced. He was traded from the Phillies to the Cubs but never played in the majors again. He was the infamous "player to be named later" in that deal.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is the epilogue which details what happened in the lives of the players and the other principals in the years after 1964. I haven't given any details about what happened during that season or later because I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't read the book. I'll leave that to people who don't mind doing that sort of thing. But I certainly encourage you to read it -- even if you are not a baseball fan.

I own over a hundred baseball books -- fiction and nonfiction -- and have no idea how many I have read. However, this one goes near the top of my list of favorites.

I see Colton's book as a companion to one of my other favorites: "October 1964" by David Halberstam. Both books deal with baseball in the same year, but at a different level. And race relations are at the forefront of both.

In 1964, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. They could not have won without their four young black stars -- Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bill White. They defeated the New York Yankees, a great dynasty, but one of the last major league teams to integrate. The Cardinals would win two other pennants and one other World Series in the 1960's, while the Yankees would have to wait more than a decade to play in their next World Series. It is not coincidental that by that time the team was thoroughly integrated.

[LBK · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I won this book as part of a First Reads giveaway*

Southern League tells the story of a minor league team in the heart of Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement. Colton tells the story of the team month by month through the stories of some of the players. It's interesting just how much the white players didn't realize just what the other players were dealing with.

I really enjoyed Colton going back and forth in telling the players' stories. He gave equal background on players of each race and showed how they viewed the Civil Rights Movement. He made it very clear that none of the players saw themselves as activists, but their actions on and off the field did make a statement about what each of them believed.

Very well written and engaging from beginning to end. I liked the interweaving of the Civil Right Movement and the baseball season as it really put into perspective what the players were dealing with.

[Chris Brassfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is both a great baseball story and an excellent history lesson on the tension and violence in 1960's Birmingham. Highly recommended.

[Chuck Lipsig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe that one of the largest, if not the largest, factors in the decline of racism since WW2 has been the integration of sports. Sports is one of the ultimate mixers of people, by race, class, and other factors. This is so, not just within the teams themselves, but within their fan-bases, who frequently mix with each other. Besides, it's more difficult -- not impossible, but more difficult -- to be a racist, when you're cheering for someone of another race to knock in the winning run (or score a touchdown or hit the game-winning basket or etc.) This book is a good exhibit for that case.

In 1961, the minor league Southern Association had folded, after racist elements in Birmingham, Alabama had forced Albert Belcher, the owner of the Birmingham Barons franchise to close, rather than integrate. But in early 1964, less than a year after the Birmingham Church bombing and while Bull Conner and the KKK still had a strong political influence (though Conner had been ousted from office), Belcher, with the support of Charlie Finley, owner of the then Kansas City A's and a native of Birmingham, himself, was ready to give it another go. He revived the Barons in the semi-new Southern League (created out of the franchises of the South Atlantic League), integrated them with players like Tommie Reynolds, Bert Campaneris, and (later in the season) John "Blue Moon" Odom, and personally removed the chicken wire that had separated the black and white sections of Birmingham's venerable Rickwood Stadium.

Not that Belcher was a saint -- besides having caved in 1961, he had supported Conner and George Wallace. But the intervening years had told him that Birmingham needed something the entire community could cheer for and he missed owning a baseball club. And if that took having an integrated team, then the Birmingham Barons were going to be integrated -- and not even the Klan would talk him out of it.

The book concentrates on six figures, Belcher, the aforementioned black players, Reynolds and Odom, two white players, Paul Lindblad and Hoss Bowlin, and the manager Haywood Sullivan. Sullivan was a native of Dothan, Alabama and a former starting quarterback, here at the University of Florida, before having a somewhat brief major league baseball career. He was also the perfect manager for the Birmingham team. Besides being a good manager, he was a southerner, who, if he was racist (and it doesn't appear he was) believed in treating people decently more than by race. He would later become an executive with and, eventually, the owner of the Boston Red Sox.

The author, himself, was a minor league pitcher (with one appearance in a major league uniform), who played in the Southern League in 1966, two years later. Actually, one the more impressive stories is one he experienced during his time in the league, that he mentions in the intro. The team stopped off to eat a roadside diner, only to be told that "N*****s have to eat out back." The manager, Andy Seminick, replied "Then you don't serve none of us," and led the team back to the bus. Seminick had been the starting catcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, during the year Jackie Robinson broke in. And the Phillies were, per many accounts, the team that give Robinson the hardest time. I have no idea how much Seminick took part in the razzing nor how he personally felt about race. Still it shows how team can overcome race.

The first half or so of this book is the strongest part. Once the season has started and blacks and whites were sitting together in Rickwood without much problems, the story becomes on of a minor league pennant race -- interesting, if more commonplace. But the first half or so of the book is golden. I highly recommend it.

[Arthur Kyriazis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best baseball books under the rader ever. It's about the 1964 Birminghman Barons, who played at old Rickwood Field. Rickwood Field was laid out precisely according to the dimensons of Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The main tenants in Birmingham were for many years a white minor league team, and the Birmingham Black Barons, a famous Negro League team which featured Satchel Paige when he first came up.

This book is about the Kansas City As farm team that played in Birmingham that year, amidst the racial violence of Bull Connor in Birmingham and Selma and civil rights that year.

It features Bert Campaneris, Blue Moon Odom, Paul Lindbland, and the manager was none other than infamous Red Sox GM and owner Heywood Sullivan.

Larry Colton weaves together an amazing tale. For this is the birth of the Oakland Athletics dynasty--and also the birth of the New South--all in one compelling story.

This was a gripping must read, from cover to cover.

Thank you Larry Colton, and when will this book be optioned for a terrific movie?

[John Kaufmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mediocre, probably 2.5 stars (I gave it three stars). I was expecting more. The premise sounded good. The story line is placed in the south in the sixties when civil rights was front and center and starred two minority players, Blue Moon Odom and Bert Campaneris, who eventually went on the major league stardom with the Oakland A's. The book did a fair job of covering Odom and Campaneris, in particular how good they were. But it didn't give much of a look at their personalities or how they coped with playing in the deep south. In fact, while "Civil Rights" is in the book's subtitle, I didn't think it was a major part of the book. The team's owner took a courageous step of sponsoring an integrated team in Birmingham, and the players were subjected to indignities on and off the field. But either it wasn't as bad as I would have expected it to be, or the author didn't cover it with sufficient depth or detail. It didn't seem to me, from the book, that it was a major distraction for the players , or that they had to summon up significant reserves of courage and fortitude to power through.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Could not put it down and was sad when it ended. Just marvelous. Author Larry Colton writes about the Birmingham (AL) Barons, a minor Southern League team (part of the then Kansas City A's organization) that fielded its first integrated team in 1964, a notoriously horrible banner year and time in Birmingham. The 1964 team was competitive (the Southern League pennant race was a nail-biter), so excitement on the field against a backdrop of civil rights action and excitement of a different sort, often terrifying.

Kudos to Mr. Colton for researching and really nailing this story. It's a wonderful book.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Birmingham barons were a Double A team in the Southern League. The book focused on the team during the 1964 baseball season. The Barons were the first integrated to play in the South and the story tells of the difficulties the players most of them in their early 20's. Fans of Kansas City baseball will recognize many names, since the Barons were a farm team of the A's. You probably need to be a pretty good baseball fan to fully appreciate the book. But it does tell the story of some gutsy kids facing the cowardly segregationists

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on minor league baseball and racial integration during the tumultuous year of 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama. The author weaves a nice tale, with stories from four ballplayers (two black, two white) about that year and how they handled being the first integrated team in Alabama. Quick and easy read to boot.

[Kathleen Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good story but having just read The Warmth of Other Suns, I felt it was not as good a picture of racial tensions in the south as other readers thought. I also thought it read like a series of newspaper columns rather than a book. Not sorry I read it but I've read better baseball stories .

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those baseball fans out there, this is a wonderful read. For those of us who are also history fans this is a wonderful read. I thoroughly enjoyed the meshing of the the two.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not just a baseball book. This book is about a time and a place that I know I did not see or experience. I cannot imagine what some of these men had to go through. The story takes place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1964. Baseball is coming back to this town and to other towns in the South. But like so much of everything else that is happening there are a lot of that don’t want baseball back. Because now it will not be segregated. The author Larry Colton, mostly follows 4 players, Johnny “Blue Moon” Odom, Tommie Reynolds from CA. Bert Campaneries, from Cuba, and Paul Lindblad. Odom would not get to the team until after he graduated from high school. This was a farm team for the Kansas City A’s, who were owned by Charlie Finley, he was some character. This was still years before he moved the team to Oakland. The team was managed by a man named Haywood Sullivan. Mister Colton weaves stories, tragedies really from the civil rights movement and even events that happened long before the 60s that really shaped the minds of these people in the South. This part of the story true and I know needs to be told and retold, still bother me for the lack of total injustice and people never being held accountable, even so-called law enforcement. These are just a few of the things these players had to deal with. I will say Mister Sullivan did work everyone as a team. They would not eat at certain dinners because they could not eat as a team. And people need to remember that though Campaneries was from Cuba he could not go were the whites went because he was darker skinned. How ignorant. That was the times in the south and these men were playing baseball trying to win their league championship. That part of the story is very fascinating. I really enjoyed the baseball part because I remember watching Bert Campaneries, playing shortstop for the A’s when they won 3 straight World Series, “Blue Moon” was there along with Paul Lindblad. Tommie Reynolds also made it to the big leagues. Haywood Sullivan, would manage one year with the big club then spend the 25 plus years with the Red Sox, at the end being part owner before selling in the 90”s. a good book about baseball and what was going on in our country at that time. I got this book from galley.

[Merredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was our December office book club selection. I am not a baseball fan, but I am a history fan. There is a lot of actual baseball talk, plays, scores, etc., in this book, so if you like that sort of thing, you'll enjoy this. If you're not a sports person, there's so much more to the book that you might want to read it anyway. In 1964, a minor league baseball team, the Birmingham Barons, reformed and became the first Southern League integrated team. Yes, Birmingham. In a series of short little stories about a few of the players, both black and white, as well as the manager, owner, and owner of their parent major league team, the A's, we learn how sports can influence society, as well as the history of what was going on around then. I think popular culture plays a large part in getting society used to changes and promoting acceptance. I loved all of this aboout the book. What I did not love was the writing style. We have a story about one guy, starting from high school, giving his background, then we abruptly switch to the same thing about another guy. And another, and another. Then we'll be back at the first guy, and the author will take us through what he already said and then add a little bit on the end. So we have the confusion of switching people around and I got their names and everything all mixed up, plus the boredom of having things repeated over and over again. In general, I love when books switch points of view, and even when they switch around in time and space, but the way it was done in this book was confusing and boring. If the subject matter had not had been so interesting, I wouldn't have been able to get past the style at all. I didn't finish the book by our book club meeting, but after, I don't feel like I can go on with the book. I think I've gotten the jist of it without having to finish. This was a very timely read, as what's going on in the news, and the protests. I was reading in here about people protesting the police killing a young black man, just as it was happening here in real life. I recomend that people try this book out, and if you can get through the writing, you'll probably enjoy it and learn a lot.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, at heart this is a baseball book that happens to address a team that was integrated in Birmingham in 1964, right in the middle of some of the worst of the public Civil Rights difficulties (think of the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church). I think I expected it to be more thoroughly about the differences faced by the Black and White players. That was in there, absolutely. But it was a baseball book, loud and clear.

I'm not THAT much of a baseball fan! LOL

But it was really well written, such that even a non-fanatic like me could follow and enjoy the story. I didn't need as much of everyone's stats as the author gave, but clearly I wasn't really his target audience. If you follow the sport at all, I suspect that this would be a wonderful view into the way that the Great American Pastime helped a city to experience true integration at a time when no one thought it was possible.

[Dennis Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you don't love baseball, you should read this book. The tales it relates regarding racism from a critical era in our nation's history are tales that we should all understand. Mr. Colton focuses on certain players on the '64 Barons as well as the manager and owner, and he put enough time researching them to bring them to life. I found myself rooting for them, whether I knew their names prior to the book or not. They were just ordinary ballplayers and people doing what they needed to within a cocoon of social experimentation of sorts. Without overplaying its significance in the struggle for civil rights, Mr. Colton effectively brings out this story of the Barons to show an important step in the evolution of the South in treating blacks as equals. As a person born in the South years after this season, I was continually shocked at the ugly behavior displayed against the brave black players on the Barons. I thank Mr. Colton for bringing these stories to life.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, the book was ok.

Based on the title 'Civil Rights' I expected more than a smattering of stories inserted between baseball stats. Maybe if I were a bigger baseball fan, I would've enjoyed it more. Lots of stats.
While the book follows 4 players, I expected to hear more about how the players felt playing in such a racially divided city. Again, just brief, random stories...most of which aren't related to the baseball players themselves, but racially charged violence and events happening in and around Birmingham.. Plus, it gets a little repetitive.

The story is somewhat chronological, but at the same time seems scattered and doesn't have a good flow.

Again, if you're looking for a baseball book, this may be for you, however, if you're wanting more history and personal accounts, look elsewhere.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love baseball and I enjoyed this story of the Birmingham Barons during their first year as an integrated team in 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama. Anyone who was aware in the 60's can remember what the South was like during integration. I'm not knocking the South; I grew up and lived there most of my life. The book focuses on 4 players, 2 white/2 nonwhite (black, Cuban, etc). It tells of their days on the team, playing all over the South, and also gives some insight into their private lives. The level of discrimination was shocking. I lived through that era, but it was a reminder of how far we've come in 40 years and how far we still have to go. And a very interesting look into the lives of minor league players "back in the day".

[Hollis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Civil Rights. Alabama. Integration. Heroes. Villains. Baseball. A pennant chase.

Maybe it's just because I'm a sports and history buff, but this is one of the most compelling yet little known stories ever told. Larry Colton is a wonderful writer and gives the setting, Birmingham just after the infamous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, and the players, black, white, Hispanic, northerners, southerners, tremendous depth and meaning. This is more than strike outs and homers...the minor league bus rides, poor pay, Jim Crow, prejudice and triumph are all examined in detail.

If you enjoy American history, read this book. You'll be glad you did.

[Alan Spinrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. The story of the integration of minor league baseball, on the field and in the stands, in Birmingham, many years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the big leagues, and only shortly after the awful violence in Birmingham, simultaneously brings hope that we can progress beyond such conduct and the attitudes that caused it, and a sense of shame that there is so much ground left to cover. Nevertheless, sports, with its often conservative mindset about how to play the game, still leads the way in teaching folks from multiple cultures that working together to seek a common goal can bring the best out of all of us.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Southern League" chronicles the minor league baseball team Birmingham Barons during the politically charged 1964 season. In Alabama, the last bit of resistance to racial integration is strongly entrenched in the city of Birmingham. In spite of that, the Barons, the first integrated team in the city's sports history, took the field that year, uncertain of its future and the city's future. As the season wears on, the team slowly grows on the city, and becomes a symbol of unity in the face of upheaval. Best sports story I read in a while. Everyone on that Barons' team showed unbelievable strength, and demonstrated incredible resolve to play the game of baseball as a team.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. The title is slightly misleading because it focuses on one key team in the Southern League, the Birmingham Barons, and not very much on the other teams. Regardless, what makes this story so compelling is the interface between baseball (America's pasttime) and some of the the death throes of American institutional racism. Good American values as exemplified by baseball and bad American values as exemplified by militant segregation.

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

With pitchers & catchers reporting on the heels of the Astros scandal, I needed to be reminded that baseball can be something better than players who cheat to get ahead. This book fit that bill in spades. It's a nice mesh of baseball & history, with some interesting characters mixed in for good measure..... All in all, this is a good book that will make you fall in love with baseball all over again.

[Dale Stonehouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably more valuable as an historical narrative than baseball story, the one drawback being the tricks of memory of all his living witnesses and others being deceased. The author has special insight into the goals and dreams of the players, having pitched in one game in the major leagues in 1967.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was scary, sad, fun & interesting. Even if you don't like baseball, you learn a lot about the racial conflicts going on the south, particularly in Birmingham, Alabama. Lots of evil in the political structure in Alabama at the time in the late 50s and early 60s. Highly recommend it.

[Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good account of the first integrated Birmingham baseball team. It does a good job of helping the reader learn about the players on the team. I think it could have used some better proof reading; I recall seeing two or three things that may have been typos.

I recommend the book.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really a fan of baseball, but I truly enjoyed this book. It was a perfect mix of history, stories of people from different walks if life coming together & baseball. It was well written & quite interesting.

[Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book of an interesting time. the book is a very good blend of the baseball story and the southern history.
A reread of this account of the 1964 season and the Barons coming back to baseball with the surrounding story of civil rights.

[Del · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent telling of the story about how financial self interest (Capitalism, to put it plainly) became a powerful force to drive desegregation the Alabama when baseball was driving crowds to the stands. I very much enjoyed this book. Highly recommended.

[Frank Ogden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book about the Southern baseball league. This league was instrumental in the development of Negro baseball players who were good to make the major league. Highly recommended for a serious baseball fan who wants to broaden their baseball knowledge.