Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit

by Tom Stanton Narrated by Johnny Heller

Overview

Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens-even, possibly, a beloved athlete.



Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Great Depression's hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey-all while Joe Louis chased boxing's heavyweight crown.



Amidst such glory, the Legion's dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean's involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey Cochrane's reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's brutal union buster.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/18/2016
Glittering triumphs cover up a sordid racist conspiracy in this lively vignette of the Motor City in its heyday. Swerving between hysterical excitement and hysterical fear, the city embodied the roiling socioeconomic and ideological currents of the 1930s. Journalist Stanton (The Final Season) narrates the mid-1930s transformation of the lackluster Detroit Tigers into World Series contenders under charismatic catcher and manager Mickey Cochrane, a story replete with colorful, superstitious players and ninth-inning drama. (Simultaneous championships for the Lions, the Red Wings, and Detroit boxer Joe Louis add to the epic.) Providing counterpoint is the saga of the Black Legion, a Klan-inspired Midwestern secret society that despised African-Americans, Catholics, Jews, immigrants, leftists and union organizers. Despite comic-opera trappings—members pledged to sign their names in blood at nighttime ceremonies—the group, which included politicians, police officers, and prosecutors, was a menace; it plotted to assassinate political opponents, committed several murders, carried out bombings and arson, and conspired to gas synagogues and contaminate ethnic neighborhoods with typhoid germs. The smushed-together halves of Stanton’s book don’t really articulate well, but they combine to form a vivid portrait of Depression-stricken Detroit, a cauldron of racial tensions, police brutality, and strife between management and workers. Photos. (June)

Booklist

(Starred Review) If you’re looking for a book that combines sports, crime, and history in one package, look no further…. For fans of books about baseball, Depression-era American History, and crime nonfiction, this book is a must-read.

From the Publisher

With the racist Black Legion spreading evil and the rambunctious Detroit Tigers bringing joy, Detroit’s seemingly eternal forces of darkness and light coexist in this captivating slice of American history.”
—David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story and When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi

"Today, Detroit is a shadow of its former self. This fascinating book reveals what an astonishing place it formerly was. Eight decades ago, it was a boiling cauldron of social extremism, extravagant criminality, and athletic excellence. Readers of this book have a new understanding of the city and the Thirties."
—George F. Will

Us News and World Report

[A] head-turning tale of the generally forgotten Black Legion terrorist group and Detroit in the 1930s.

Booklist

(Starred Review) If you’re looking for a book that combines sports, crime, and history in one package, look no further…. For fans of books about baseball, Depression-era American History, and crime nonfiction, this book is a must-read.

George F. Will

Today, Detroit is a shadow of its former self. This fascinating book reveals what an astonishing place it formerly was. Eight decades ago, it was a boiling cauldron of social extremism, extravagant criminality, and athletic excellence. Readers of this book have a new understanding of the city and the Thirties.

Library Journal

06/01/2016
A city rich with history, Detroit is widely known for its sports teams, including the Tigers (baseball), Red Wings (hockey), and Lions (football). For Detroit, the 1930s was a period of corruption, crime, sports, and murder. It was also the era of the notoriously racist "klan like" group called the Black Legion. Stanton (The Final Season) has written an engaging piece that highlights this darkened time. Stanton's masterly prose is thoroughly engaging from cover to cover. Chronicling baseball legends such as Mickey Cochran and Hank Greenberg, Stanton offers engrossing stories that are filled with historical gems. He contrasts the awful crimes committed by the Black Legion with accounts of the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions, who all won championships during this decade. The author further follows Joe Louis, one of boxing's most famous stars, who made his debut in 1932. VERDICT Packed with fascinating background, this work will be enjoyed not only by fans of Detroit sports, but all sports enthusiasts.—Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-03-17
A veteran journalist uses a variety of lenses to illuminate the dark story of the Black Legion, an association of murderous (white) domestic terrorists who briefly thrived in the upper Midwest. Stanton (Journalism/Univ. of Detroit; Ty and the Babe: Baseball's Fiercest Rivals, 2007) unfolds the history of the Legion gradually, always keeping it in the social, cultural, and economic context of the area where it was born and grew: the territory around western Lake Erie. Although the author tells us about the horrors perpetrated by the Legion (whippings, intimidations, murders), he follows other stories closely: the rise of boxer Joe Louis and the phenomenal year of 1935 for Detroit's professional athletic teams—the Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings all won championships. Stanton gives the Tigers the most attention, especially their player-manager, catcher Mickey Cochrane, a ferocious competitor who eventually crumbled into a nervous breakdown. Hank Greenberg, the first Jewish baseball star, also is often front and center. And there are cameos for a couple of future U.S. presidents (football star Gerald Ford, courted by the Lions, and Ronald Reagan, a broadcaster at the time). It's evident throughout that the author assiduously researched his project; he seems to have read every newspaper and magazine account of the events and to have walked the blood-soaked ground (he ends with a visit to a relevant cemetery). Stanton is also quite clear about the corrosive political and law enforcement corruption that enabled the Black Legion to commit their atrocities without much blowback. "Numerous city figures and their followers belonged," he writes, "including a councilman, police officers, and fire officials. Their biases spread along a spiteful scale from serious…to silly." In 1936, however, a group of diligent cops began investigating and arresting, and the whole house of cards toppled very quickly—though, as Stanton points out, many murders remain unsolved and crime scenes uninvestigated. First-rate reporting and a seminar in how to employ context in investigative and historical journalism.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170826407
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	12/06/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,082,212

Videos