Tom Dunkel

Tom Dunkel’s Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line chronicles the unique 1930’s team in Bismarck, North Dakota that car dealer Neil Churchill assembled: an amalgam of the best players - black or white - that he could find. He manage to acquire some of the greatest Negro League players of the era: Quincy Troupe, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Hilton Smith, and the inimitable Satchel Paige, who is clearly the star of the show and the centerpiece of the show more narrative. In the chapter that introduces Paige, the author perfectly captures the larger-than-life personality and peculiarities of one of the dazzling pitchers the game has ever seen. In conveying the essence of the grassroots semipro game, Dunkel writes with a distinctive flair and a wry sense of humor. But beyond this intriguing but largely forgotten chapter in baseball history, he provides a wealth of historical, social and economic context to give the full picture of the impact of the Great Depression in the Great Plains. show less

I am hesitant to give this book a starred rating, because it is a fascinating and enjoyable read but...like many baseball writers, Dunkel tends to digress from his theme by relating colorful, interesting, unusual baseball stories. Since Satchel Paige is one of his main characters, there are a lot of fascinating diversions, some of them familiar, some less so. But Dunkel's purpose is to talk about a Bismarck, ND, town team that integrated black and white semi-pro players in the 1930s. What is show more most fascinating about this is the context: black players had occasionally played with white players on various teams at levels below the major leagues but the 1930s was the period when segregation extended downward from the majors into semi-pro and amateur teams across America. Dunkel tells the story, but I wish there had been less of "and then Satchel did this" and more of how it felt to the black and white players on that Bismarck team to play together. show less

Intriguing story, gets off track a little but still very readable. One demerit for having no index, a flaw for a non-fiction book.