This is a particularly interesting biography about a seminal figure in American history. Not just baseball history, but American history as a whole. Paige was a larger than life figure throughout his incredibly long baseball career, hurling thousands of games both in the Negro Leagues and in barnstorming exhibitions across the country and into Latin America for decades, before finally making a belated entrance into the Major Leagues in 1948 while in his 40s. Although most of us have heard of Paige and his famous saying, "Don't look back, somebody might be gaining on you," I wasn't really aware of how famous a figure Paige was throughout the Depression and through the war years.

Tye obviously did lots and lots of research and interviews, and he goes as deeply as he can to separate fact from legend when it comes to Paige. The fact that we can't ever know, in places, how successful he's actually been at this is part of the book's charm. When he can't do any better, he simply relates the different versions of particular stories as supplied to him by the different sources he's found. At any rate, legend aside, I learned a heck of a lot about Paige and came to realize just how influential a figure he was to baseball history and how famous he was across the country during his heyday, how he pushed back racial boundaries simply by being himself and insisting on living life by his own rules.

This book is just full of intriguing information about Paige, about the history of the Negro Leagues and even about the ultimate integration of the Major Leagues. For example, I was fascinated to learn that Paige and many of the other Negro League veterans had very little use for Jackie Robinson, although they said all the right things to reporters, and he had very little respect for them or all that they had accomplished and endured. This book will go a long way toward shining a light on a compelling figure in American history before he recedes too far into the mists of time to make such research feasible. I'm giving it 4 1/2 stars, due to the fact that, occasionally, Tye's writing style goes a little dry. Overall, though, wow. ( )