Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball

Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball

by Luke Epplin
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball

Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball

by Luke Epplin

Hardcover

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Overview

The riveting story of four menLarry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paigewhose 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 one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history.

In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy.

Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series—all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250313799
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication date: 03/30/2021
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 238,107
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Luke Epplin’s writing has appeared online in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, GQ, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and The Paris Review Daily. Born and raised in rural Illinois, Luke now lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Beginnings

1 The Duel 11

2 Learning to Be Alone 29

3 The Storybook Ballplayers 39

4 The Gingerbread Man 50

5 Two Sides of the Navy 58

6 No Gentleman 66

7 Tales from the South Pacific 74

Part II Breakthroughs

8 The Crossroads 91

9 Effa Manley's Dilemma 97

10 The Deal Is Closed 103

11 Exploding the Fireworks 112

12 Opposite Directions 123

13 Head-to-Head 132

14 Hands and Knees 141

15 The Promise 155

16 A New and Strange World 161

17 Closed Ranks 170

18 Fever 185

19 The Final Duel 191

Part III Frenzy

20 If I Can Stick with This Team 199

21 Under the Knife, Beyond the Axe 210

22 Enter Paige 219

23 Pandemonium 230

24 The Gingerbread Men 242

25 The Photo 257

26 Fever Dreams 273

Epilogue 287

Acknowledgments 297

Notes 301

Bibliography 365

Index 381

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