Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman's Tribute to Ebbets Field

The third and final volume in Thomas Porky McDonald's "Irishman's Tribute" trilogy, Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman's Tribute to Ebbets Field, takes the reader back to a time that pre-dates the writer himself. As in the first installment of this set, An Irishman's Tribute to the Negro Leagues, McDonald summons up the ghosts of a time long ago, before his own birth and that of all the just about every Major Leaguer around as the 21st Century dawns. Using all the relevant resources that have been at his disposal for a lifetime, that is, those who were around before the integration of Major League baseball, McDonald whispers a hymn of praise to the emerald grass that once grew at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Sprinkled with stories that celebrate the early years of Brooklyn baseball at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Sullivan (once Cedar) Place, as well as the "Daffiness Boys" of the 1920's and 30's and the fabled "Boys of Summer" of the late 40's and early 50's, Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman's Tribute to Ebbets Field may well be the most polished of the three-book set. This is most significant when you consider that only the second volume, Over the Shoulder and Plant On One: An Irishman's Tribute to Willie Mays, is taken even partly from actual events in McDonald's life. Also containing a representative helping of McDonald's signature baseball poetry, including seminal pieces "The Park That Isn't There" and "A Church I Never Went To", Hit Sign, Win Suit attempts to enlighten anyone who wasn't around when the Brooklyn Dodgers made history by signing Jackie Robinson, while also looking to those who were there for acceptance of his perception of a time most of us today couldn't imagine. Profiles of players, managers, announcers, writers and fans, all an integral part of the Brooklyn baseball experience, rounds out a most unique look at the National Pastime.