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

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.