Color Blind

The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball's Color Line

By: Tom Dunkel

Narrated by: Ben Bartolone

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

During the Great Depression, out in drought stricken North Dakota, one of the most improbable teams in the history of baseball was put together by one of the sport's most unlikely champions. In Bismarck, a decade before Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues, car dealer Neil Churchill signed the best players he could find, regardless of race, and fielded an integrated squad that took on all comers in spectacular fashion.

Color Blind, from award-winning journalist Tom Dunkel, tells this remarkable, largely forgotten story. When baseball swept America in the years after the Civil War, independent, semi-pro, and municipal leagues sprouted up everywhere. Color Blind immerses the reader in the wild and wonderful world of independent baseball, with its tough competition and its novelty - from all-brother teams and a prison team (who only played home games, naturally) to one from a religious commune that sported Old Testament beards.

Dunkel traces the rise of the Bismarck squad, and follows them through their ups and downs, focusing on the 1935 season, and the first National Semi-Pro Tournament in Wichita, Kansas. This is an entertaining, must-listen audiobook for anyone interested in the history of baseball.

©2013 Tom Dunkel (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

A must have for fans of Baseball history

The research for "Color Blind" by Tom Dunkel is simply meticulous. If you are a fan of baseball history, I simply can not recommend this audiobook strongly enough. The author brilliantly describes the events that led up the 1935 semi-pro baseball tournament in Wichita, Kansas, and allows the reader to take the many trips around the baseball circuit. The often forgotten Bismarck team was a successful integrated squad that broke the color barrier years before Jackie Robinson made his Major League debut.

I have reviewed many audiobooks, but this was the first that compelled me to listen to it again immediately after the first reading. The narration is top notch by Ben Bertolone, who also did a magnification job reading "Pete Rose: An American Dilemma." Businessman Neil Churchill used his resources to assemble a team that faced the likes of the traveling House of David team, Jamestown, and even traveling to Manitoba.

Dunkel establishes Churchill's relationship with Abe Saperstein, who formed the magnification Harlem Globetrotters, another successful traveling attraction. Like Saperstein, Churchill recruited talented African American talent to draw strong crowds, even during the crippling Great Depression years. While traveling, Churchill adopted an all or nothing policy, which required establishments to provide service to his entire team.

Churchill spared no expense to attract both black and white baseball talent, such as future hall of famers Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith. The author shares stories that authenticates Paige as being one of the greatest hurlers in baseball history, regardless of color. even out-pitching another hall of famer, Dizzy Dean during an exhibition game. Dunkel clearly sustains that had Paige been white, he would have earned substantially more money in his illustrious baseball career.

If you are a fan of baseball, do yourself a favor, and give this exceptional work a listen!