Stars in the Shadows: The Negro League All-Star Game of 1934 (review)

Shut out of segregated Major League all-star competitions, the Negro League launched its own high-profile game in 1933 and in 1934 featured a people's-choice lineup of players, with voting coordinated by major black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender. Smith recreates the entire game in rhymed verse, with fictional Lester Roberts of WNLB calling the plays and providing color commentary, and Morrison supplying spirited, lovingly exaggerated charcoal illustrations of the action that radio listeners could only conjure in their imaginations. Roberts keeps the patter flowing allegro non troppo through all nine tense innings, lacing the action with plenty of humor ("The first inning, folks, is now in the books/ as Slim [Jones] brought the heat and Turkey [Stearnes] got cooked"). Commercial breaks advertise African-American businesses on Chicago's South Side, and shaded sidebars eavesdrop on fans in the stands extolling the virtues of their favorite players: "Is that the same Josh Gibson everybody calls the Brown Bambino? . . . [I]t sounds to me like they should call Babe Ruth 'the white Josh Gibson.'" Read aloud the top of the eighth for a booktalk hook, and kids who relive Cool Papa Bell's mad dash for home for the day's single run won't want to be anywhere else but Comiskey Park on August 26, 1934.