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

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.