<p>This is a book about baseball. And much more. It is a story of people and events of the early 1900s: the Titanic, World War I, Roaring Twenties, flappers, a flight over the Atlantic, the stock market crash, and the Great Depression. It is a story, too, of America's oldest ball park, Rickwood Field, in Birmingham, Alabama, and a post-season series for the baseball championship of the South. And it is a story of the history of a nation during the early twentieth century. Within its pages, the book brings to life the people and the times in an age of war, prosperity, and depression. 1931. The Great Bull Market has come crashing down and depression has settled over the land. In September of that year, an aging pitcher on the downside of his career faces a brash up-and- comer in the Dixie Series, featuring the Birmingham Barons and the Houston Buffaloes. In the midst of the Depression, twenty thousand people journeyed to Rickwood Field on a fearfully hot day to witness one of baseball's most celebrated minor league games. The aging pitcher in that game: Ray Caldwell, 43 years old, a former major-leaguer of whom New York Yankees Manager Miller Huggins once said, "If he had possessed a sense of responsibility and balance, he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest of all pitchers." The up-and- comer: Dizzy Dean, 21 years old, on the brink of his Hall of Fame career. Incorporated within the narrative are stories of people, places, and events associated with Rickwood Field, a ball park that stands to this day.</p>

Showdown at Rickwood: Ray Caldwell, Dizzy Dean, and the Early Years of America's Oldest Ball Park

Art Black

Blue Rooster Press

At Bat: Journeys to Fame and Glory through Rickwood Field

<p>Fame and Fortune in The Show transports the reader through the years of the Great Depression and into the middle 1960’s. Art Black weaves baseball into the fabric of America’s defining event of the twentieth century: the Second World War. From the opening pages, the book draws you in, as Germany invades Poland, as America enters the conflict, and as newspapers bring the war — and baseball — to the world. An imaginary, old-school newspaper reporter tells the story. The book, however, is not about World War II or about world affairs. The book is about baseball. It is about people — from the coal mines, from the factories and the foundries, people who could hear the crack of the bat from the stands and people who could hear it miles away over the radio as life played out in theaters of war and hardship and victory and change. Through it all winds a thread of racial tension that wounded a city but didn’t kill it. And within are stories of those who performed at Rickwood Field: Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Satchel Paige, Casey Stengel, and many others. You’ll read of Willie Mays before fame and fortune found him. You’ll meet a famous broadcaster and a master promoter. You’ll cheer a disturbed Jim Piersall before he endured a nervous breakdown. The book is about baseball at Rickwood Field and is an homage to all the ball players who played at Rickwood on their way to or from the big leagues, or as happenstance would have it, to or from ordinary circumstances in extraordinary times.</p>

Fame and Fortune in The Show: Baseball at Rickwood Field and Beyond in the Middle 1900s

I Love You Paper Reverse Coloring Book Reveal Heartfelt Expressions of Heart: 53 Beautiful Artworks Perfect Gift for All Ages

Arts & Photography

Drawing

Independently published

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Books by Art Black