The End of Baseball (2008) by Peter Schilling, Jr.
Good Reads meta-data is 340 pages, rated 3.85 by 209 litizens.
Genre: Alt History.
DNA: Baseball.
Verdict: What a ride!
Tagline: If only.
In Hollywood where fiction is fact the publicity for this book would say ‘inspired by a true story,’ almost. Bill Veeck, baseball fans need no explanation, lived and breathed baseball, and kept himself alive through 36 operations after losing a leg on Guadalcanal (1942) in the USMC dreaming of hit-and-run, sacrifice bunts, faked cut-offs, catcher pick-offs, and line-drive doubles. An invalid, he returned to the States in 1944 to light up the world of baseball for the next forty years, wooden leg and all.
The premise of this novel is that Veeck acted on his oft stated ambition to break the colour bar in Major League Baseball, hatching a complicated plan to do so in a coup de theatre that would surprise and defeat the many opponents of this change. The nub of the plan was that he, with his $500 payout from the Marines, would buy two baseball teams, one all-white and one all-black, and Hey Presto! Switch the one for the other on Opening Day! Genius! So he thought, but well, what did the elder von Moltke say, no plan survives first contact with reality, and neither did this one.
FYI the two teams were the catastrophically broke Philadelphia Athletics in the American League and the unloved Philadelphia Stars of the Negro League. This latter team was hardly better off financially than the A’s, but had many talented athletes. Veeck assembled investors who had profited from some of his legerdemain before the war to funds the deals without knowing his master plan, and off he goes in this roller coaster ride of one imaginary season.
The cast of characters ranges from Satchel Paige (whose autograph I once had), Buck Leonard, Roy Campanella, J Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Judge Landis, and a great many more. What a kaleidoscope of the times and places of 1944.
Post Script. By the way Veeck did break the colour bar in the American League when he ran the Cleveland Indians by signing and playing Larry Dobey.