Southern League

April 15, 2013
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.

Starred review from February 15, 2013

Former major league pitcher Colton delivers a moving account of the 1964 minor league season involving the Birmingham Barons of the erstwhile segregated Southern League. As his subtitle suggests, he strives to interweave race and sports, and does so skillfully in focusing on the year following demonstrations spawned by Martin Luther King Jr.'s subsequent jailing, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham that resulted in the deaths of four girls, and the city's well-earned reputation as "Bombingham." Particularly effective are biographical sketches of pitchers John "Blue Moon" Odom and Paul Lindblad, manager Haywood Sullivan, and Kansas City Athletics owner Charles Finley, who had purchased the Birmingham franchise. Young black pitching star Odom, a native of the Deep South, contended with the region's racism with considerable courage; his white teammate Lindblad treated Odom with respect, earning the accolade "perfect teammate." All too familiar with Jim Crow practices, Georgia-born Sullivan came to deftly handle the racially integrated Barons, something encouraged by Finley. VERDICT This terrific rendering is highly recommended both to baseball fans and to students of civil rights history and African American studies.--RCC

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
Former professional baseball player and current sports journalist Colton (No Ordinary Joes: The Extraordinary True Story of Four Submariners in War and Love and Life, 2010, etc.) returns with an account of the 1964 season of the racially integrated Birmingham Barons of the Southern League. The author focuses on the fortunes not just of the team, but some key individuals: Barons' owner Albert Belcher, manager Haywood Sullivan, pitchers Paul Lindblad and John Blue Moon Odom, players Hoss Bowlin and Tommie Reynolds. Numerous others pop up, as well--e.g., Bert Campaneris and, most notably, Charlie Finley, eccentric owner of the parent team, the Kansas City Athletics, a man whom some in the Birmingham organization came to despise. (He called up Odom, Campaneris and others--key losses for the Barons.) Colton also keeps track of the explosive racial issues occurring that summer. Birmingham had a nasty racial history (the church bombing that killed four girls had occurred just the year before), and the black players on the team had to endure taunts and humiliations of all sorts--not so much in Birmingham, but on the road. Colton describes the personal lives of his principals, too--their girlfriends, wives and medical issues (Bowlin was recovering from cancer). The team was in a tight pennant race that was not decided until the penultimate day of the season. Oddly, the author offers no endnotes or bibliography (he explains he's writing a "nonacademic narration"), so readers may well wonder about the sources and fidelity of the many direct quotations and the specific thoughts of specific players. Still, he captures well the personalities of his characters; we see Campaneris' fiery temper, Lindblad's quiet humanity and humility, and Belcher's worries about potential violence. A competent but light-hitting account of a pivotal summer.

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April 15, 2013
This could be the perfect storm of a baseball book. Colton, author of Counting Coup (2000), is a former professional pitcher who debuted in 1966 with the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League, this book's subject. Two years earlier, another pitcher, eventual major-league star John Blue Moon Odom, received the largest bonus ever paid a black athlete when he was signed to the Barons by legendary Oakland owner Charles Finley. The 1964 Barons and, later, the young and naive Colton were caught up in the racial turmoil of the South, regional baseball only very recently integrated, and the notorious Bombingham of the 1960s, whose history, including the tragic church bombing that killed four children in September 1963, is chillingly summarized. He focuses on four prospectstwo white, two black, including Odomas well as the manager and the team's owner, capably recounting their life stories and ambitions. Though his prose can be flat, and the book's subtitle is a stretch, his story is so good it overwhelms the book's shortcomings. One wonders why he waited so long, but Colton has now delivered the book he seemed destined to write.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)