Customer Reviews

All the Stars Came Out That Night

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This is a historical novel about a fictional baseball game between Major League baseball stars and Negro League baseball stars. All of the major characters in the book were real people, not just the ballplayers. It's well written and entertaining, especially if you are a fan of old time baseball. The characters are probably more articulate than they were in real life, but that's not a bad thing.

In October, 1934, James Atwood Gray, an 18-year-old pool hustler from Ossage, Kansas, and John Henry Seadlund, flush with $25,000 from his first kidnapping, repair the Rolls Royce of legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow and then persuade him to drive them to St. Louis. Along the way, they pick up Elmer Dean, youngest brother of St. Louis Cardinals' pitchers Dizzy and Paul Dean, who has four tickets for the World Series in Detroit, to which they immediately head.

Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis has prohibited any Negro League player from playing for a Major League baseball team, so this "World Series" does not necessarily identify the best team in the world. The players themselves know the talent and reputations of the Negro League players. Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals has always wondered if he could beat Satchel Paige, and Babe Ruth, who is a newspaper reporter for this World Series, has always wondered if he could out-hit Josh Gibson.

When Satchel Paige decides to set up "the greatest game ever played" between the white World Series champs (St. Louis) and the Negro League All-Stars, he persuades the owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro League--Walter Augustus Greenlee, a racketeer--to bankroll the Negro team. Dizzy Dean, of the World Series-winning St. Louis Cardinals, along with Clarence Darrow, James Atwood Gray, and John Henry Seadlund, persuade Henry Ford, known for his anti-Semitic and anti-Negro stance, to bankroll the White All-Stars, which "must" win the game, to be played in Boston at Fenway Park at night and in secret.

Author Kevin King paints a broad picture of baseball during this period, using folksy language, offbeat characters, and their sometimes outrageous behavior to provide humor and interest. A panoply of famous people play cameo roles in this farce, including George Raft, Carole Lombard, Will Rogers, Dutch Schulz, Lena Horne, Ginger Rogers, Leo Durocher, W. C. Fields, Cecil B. DeMille, and even President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. (Boston Red Sox fans will also be startled to discover that venerable Luis Tiant, who later pitched for Boston in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, also plays a role as a pitcher here in 1934!). Louella Parsons covers the Hollywood aspects, and Walter Winchell narrates.

Light and fanciful, the novel is also episodic, however, with characters who are often introduced primarily for their name recognition. The Hollywood parties and the gossip are entertaining, but do not always advance the action, and the novel, at over four hundred pages, could easily have been edited and significantly shortened to improve the pacing. With flat characters and a play-by-play of the "greatest game" which would be far more interesting in a film than in a novel, this is a book that will appeal to die-hard baseball fans and lovers of Hollywood-style high life. (3.5 stars) n Mary Whipple

Imagine the best of the major league baseball players pitted against the best players in the Negro Baseball league in Fenway Park during the heart of the Depression. Kevin King's fictional account of a one night only, tightly kept secret game between the two teams is the premise of his debut novel, ALL THE STARS CAME OUT THAT NIGHT.

The St. Louis Cardinals have just won the World Series in '34 and are preparing for their off-season. Satchel Paige proposes the idea of the two teams playing. He coaches the players from the Negro league and Dizzy Dean coaches the major league players. During this time, Negro players are not allowed to play in the major leagues so this is an astonishing event. After receiving funding for the game and the blessing from the baseball Commissioner on the condition the game remains a secret, the result is the best game ever played.

Kevin King has offered an excellent piece of historical fiction in ALL THE STARS CAME OUT THAT NIGHT. King is a master of the English language so much so that I had to keep a dictionary handy. He also included several subplots that got away from the overall story. These lag times slowed my reading experience but the action of the game fully captured my attention. Filled with celebrities, influential figures from that era and an awesome line up of players, this was a nice trip back in time to ponder, what if...?

Reviewed by Paula Henderson

of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

However other readers will enjoy this Fantasy about a Dream Game between the best Negro League Players and a Team of Major League All-Stars. Satchel Paige and his friends against the Gashouse Gang and Frankie Frisch, with Di Mag still on the San Francisco Seals.A major bigot, Henry Ford sponsers the Game but wants to insure the White Team wins. Mix in Carole Lombard and George Raft along with a couple of off the wall criminals and this is great entertainment.

If you love Baseball, and the larger than life personalities that

inhabited its early years, then you have to read this book.

When you do, try to focus on the marvelous interplay between

characters like Satchel Paige and Dizzy Dean, while ignoring

the unnecessary and distracting subplots that a better

editor would have excised. The author creates priceless

vignettes that, while fictional, paint what seems like

a wonderfully accurate picture of a special time and place.

With this book, those who wonder what Henry Ford thought of our

national pastime, or what color Carole Lombard died her pubic

hair, are in luck.

I wanted to like this book but couldn't. I enjoy historical novels that resurrect baseball's storied past, such as If I Never Get Back, but this offering defied convention and didn't resonate. It tries too hard to be "high literature" while at the same time wallowing unpleasantly in the muddy underworld of its cast of lowlifes. I can accept "offbeat," but I found the narrative voice awkward and convoluted. Maybe it's a literary "nasty slider" that I'm unable to hit. My bad?

Although I managed to read the whole book (I rarely stop reading a book once I have started - no matter how bad) I hard a hard time getting past the several mistakes and other flaws in the book. From the first chapter in which the spelling of the town of Ossage, Kansas varies between "Ossage" and "Osage," I was on alert for more problems. It wasn't hard to find them. While other reviewers have mentioned that fans of baseball, especially baseball history, will enjoy this book, I found the several mistakes made it a frustrating read. True fans of baseball will have no problem picking apart the flaws in the description of the game played againt the black and white all star teams. Although I thought the premise of the book was interesting, I was disappointed in the book as a whole.