Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line by Tom Dunkel (review)

In Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line, long-time journalist Tom Dunkel crafts an engaging account of a uniquely successful 1930s semipro baseball team from Bismarck, North Dakota. This integrated team, existing in a state with a miniscule African American population, was ahead of its time fielding Negro league players, including Satchel Paige, Quincy Trouppe, Hilton Smith, Ted Radcliffe, and others. They played side-by-side with white ballplayers and led the Bismarck team to the 1935 championship of the National Baseball Congress semipro baseball tournament. Color Blind stands as an important narrative that adds to the body of historical writing about race relations in baseball.

Dunkel is a freelance writer with articles in national magazines and newspapers. In his first book, he uses this writing experience adeptly with a readable style that should resonate with casual consumers and even engross more studied experts. His polished ability is evident as he winds the narrative through brief detours that touch diverse subjects, including the Harlem Globetrotters, the House of David baseball team, the Ku Klux Klan, and the effects of the Great Depression on the northern plains.

The author became fascinated with the story of the “Bismarcks” after reading articles about “Double Duty” Radcliffe, whose chatterbox style and longevity made him one of the elder statesmen for the Negro leagues and black baseball. Radcliffe’s mention of playing in Bismarck started Dunkel on research stops across the country. Dunkel said, “It took several years to untangle the spaghetti of conflicting facts, half truths, and rumors surrounding the Bismarck team and the lost world of semipro baseball” (295).

Semiprofessional baseball had existed intermittently in Bismarck since 1911, and by the 1930s local car salesman Neil Churchill had spent many years managing the team or drumming up support for it. When he returned to manage the team in 1933, he decided to spend money bringing in quality players, regardless of race. Dunkel focuses Color Blind on the team’s exploits between 1933 and 1936, when Bismarck was home to this special group of ballplayers.

Churchill’s biggest catch was pitching great Satchel Paige, who became the club’s chief drawing card in 1933 and 1935. He proved his value by winning over thirty games, losing only two, and tying once during the two seasons. Yet, as Dunkel noted, “Paige had thoroughbred ability, but the heart of a wild stallion” (77). One of Paige’s excursions was a trip to a nearby American Indian reservation where he got some homemade snake-oil lotion that became part of his postgame massage routine—an example of the many legendary stories from Paige’s life that Dunkel relates.

Another major character is Quincy Trouppe, the team’s consistent backstop, who played from 1933 to 1936, the early years of his twenty-three-year international playing career. He was a fan favorite and a steady force on the field and in the clubhouse. Dunkel ably weaves Trouppe’s story into the fabric of the Bismarck team experience.

The account’s apex is the 1935 semipro tournament in Wichita, Kansas, which was the brainchild of local sporting goods salesman Ray “Hap” Dumont. To start off the inaugural national event, Dumont needed a hook to attract enough spectators to recoup pretournament expenses. He found it in Paige and the Bismarck team, and they did not disappoint. They took the crown in 1935 and returned the next year only to lose in the semifinals.

One of the book’s strongest contributions is its recounting of race relations at the time. Dunkel quotes Paige when he remembered, “’It wasn’t until after I signed up with Mr. Churchill that I found out I was going to be playing with white boys,’ he said. ‘For the first time since I’d started throwing, I was going to have some of them on my side. It looked like they couldn’t hold out against...