An unlikely team of misfit players, and the coach fighting to hold them all together... In his first season as head coach of the All Nations team, former slave George Grunion contends with racist crowds, low team morale, and... the ghost of the previous head coach. And if George can’t hold the All Nations together, he loses more than his job and his team. He’ll miss his chance to fulfill the prophecy made by his prescient centerfielder Mack — that George will be reunited with his estranged family before the 1918 season ends. If George doesn’t score this final run, he loses everything. "Avid, talented newcomers like Jasper help us keep the faith." — Locus

Baseball pioneer J. L. Wilkinson (1878-1964) was the owner and founder, in 1920, of the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. The only white owner in the Negro National League (NNL), Wilkinson earned a reputation for treating players with fairness and respect. He began his career in Iowa as a player, later organizing a traveling women's team in 1908 and the multiracial All-Nations club in 1912. He led the Monarchs to two Negro Leagues World Series championships and numerous pennants in the NNL and the Negro American League. During the Depression he developed an ingenious portable lighting system for night games, credited with saving black baseball. He resurrected the career of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige in 1938 and in 1945 signed a rookie named Jackie Robinson to the Monarchs. Wilkinson was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, joining 14 Monarchs players.

Since 1971, 35 Negro League baseball players and executives have been admitted to the Hall of Fame. The Negro League Hall of Fame admissions process, which has now been conducted in four phases over a 50-year period, can be characterized as idiosyncratic at best. Drawing on baseball analytics and surveys of both Negro League historians and veterans, this book presents an historical overview of NLHOF voting, with an evaluation of whether the 35 NL players selected were the best choices. Using modern metrics such as Wins Above Replacement (WAR), 24 additional Negro Leaguers are identified who have Hall of Fame qualifications. Brief biographies are included for HOF-quality players and executives who have been passed over, along with reasons why they may have been excluded. A proposal is set forth for a consistent and orderly HOF voting process for the Negro Leagues.

Swinging for the Fences tells the great stories of baseball's past, from establishment of the color line and the early formation of the barnstorming teams to dazzling hits by black heroes that led the Twins to victory over the Cardinals in 1987. Each chapter focuses on one key player and gives readers an intimate look at the national pastime as it has evolved over the last century. These are stories of the bonds that formed between players, of legendary moments in baseball's past, and of real people whose love of the game kept them playing against tough odds. Featured here are Hall of Famers like Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, and Kirby Puckett and great players like Walter Ball, John Wesley Donaldson, and Bud Fowler, who, because of their race, never made the stats books.

An Irishmans Tribute to the Negro Leagues is the first in a trilogy of Irishmans Tributes by Thomas Porky McDonald. In it, the long-ago world of Negro League Baseball is celebrated on factual, fictional, and emotional platforms. Profiles of over fifty former Negro Leaguers pay homage to the wondrous game they played. Two handfuls of Tallman Tales, McDonalds unique short stories, use the days of all-black baseball as a backdrop for some heartfelt characters that desperately seek entrance to a legendary era otherwise lost in time. Interspersed within the profiles and tales is a small collection of McDonalds trademark baseball poetry. This second edition contains additional poems and profiles, in deference to the historic Hall of Fame election of seventeen Negro League greats in 2006, via a special committee formed to try and give just due to as many of the forgotten heroes of the Negro Leagues as possible. The Hall of Fame Gallery at the center of the book contains all thirty-fivr Hall of Fame inductees based mainly on service in the Negro Leagues, from the very first one, Satchel Paige, in 1971, on through to the honored group of 2006, which included such long overdue legends as Biz Mackey, Mule Suttles, Jud Wilson, and Effa Manley, the former Newark Eagles owner who became the first woman ever honored in the plaque room at Cooperstown.

Although he never played a day in the white major leagues, John Henry "Pop" Lloyd was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. A shortstop who could take over a game with his glove or his bat, Lloyd dominated early black baseball, drawing comparisons to the most celebrated National Leaguer of his day, Honus Wagner, who declared it a privilege to be mentioned with Lloyd. Beginning his career years before the first Negro National League was established, Lloyd played for a dizzying number of teams, following the money, as he'd put it, throughout the country and sometimes past its borders, doing several stints in Cuba. He was seemingly ageless, winning two batting titles in his 40s and playing at the highest levels of blackball until he was 48. (He would continue to coach and play semi-pro baseball for another ten years.) Admired by teammates and opponents alike for his generosity and quiet strength, Lloyd was also one of the most beloved figures in white or black baseball.

Among early 20th century baseball players, John Preston "Pete" Hill (1882-1951) was considered the equal of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker--only skin color kept him out of the majors. A capable manager, Hill captained the Negro League's Chicago-based American Giants, led two expansion teams and retired from the sport as manager of the Baltimore Black Sox. Drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, this first ever biography of Hill recounts the career of a neglected Hall of Famer in the context of the turbulent issues that surrounded him--segregation, women's suffrage, Prohibition and the Spanish flu.