Customer Reviews

Black Barons of Birmingham: The South's Greatest Negro League Team and Its Players

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This is a book not about the team "Birmingham Black Barons" but the individuals who played for the Black Barons. The author divides the book into two parts, The Black Barons Before Integration, with chapters "The Black Barons of the 1920's", "The Black Barons of the 1930's" and The Black Barons of the 1940's" and The Black Barons After Integration with chapters "Post-Robinson Era Black Barons," "Players and Tryout Camps," Black Barons in the White Minor Leagues," and "Black Barons in the Major Leagues."

The entire book is simply a list of players who played for the Birmingham Black Barons and a write-up about each player. I don't know if the list is complete. As you might expect, for most of the early players not much is known about them so the write-ups are but a few sentences. More well-known players such as Satchel Page, Mule Suttles, and Double Duty Radcliff have several pages devoted to them. For more recent players like the ones in the post-Robinson era more is known about them so their write-ups become longer. Much of the information on these players is based on actual interviews conducted by the author with these players.

I found reading the book from cover to cover somewhat boring reading about player after player, especially the lesser-known players, but as a reference to information about players of the Birmingham Black Barons the book is probably a good one to have. However, a much better book in this regard is "The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues," by James A. Riley. This book not only gives information on all the players of the Birmingham Black Barons it gives information on the players of *all* the teams of the Negro Leagues and gives information about the teams as well.