This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball through the 1930s and 1940s, and went on to try out for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson. It really is a publication by and about a sportswriter who was raised near Ebbets Field, and who experienced the good lot of money in the 1950s to protect the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a publication about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory times were behind them. In a nutshell, it really is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and devastation, and informed with warmth, laughter, wit, candor, and love. “A work of high purpose and poetic fulfillment. The best possible American reserve on sports.” – Wayne Michener