Soderholm-Difatte, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and writer of the blog Baseball Historical Insight, draws parallels between America's growing pains after WWII and baseball's contemporaneous transformation following a breach in the color barrier. He details the racist history of baseball before Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey signed former Negro League star Jackie Robinson in 1947. Rickey's action sparked a constant stream of black athletes-such as Cleveland's Larry Doby, and the St. Louis Browns' Hank Thompson and Willard Brown-fighting for full citizenship against prejudiced white owners and insensitive players in the big leagues. While many owners felt that the Rickey experiment proved fruitful, others didn't believe Negro League players could perform up to pro standards. Some even produced a scathing antiblack document, the MacPhail Report. Giving a realistic context for this cultural move, Soderholm-Difatte provides a candid, unsettling analysis of the men who brought integration to the clubhouse: Rickey, Leo Durocher, and Bill Veeck, the visionaries looking ahead to the game's future. With artful prose, this expertly written account on social progress in baseball's golden age explains how integration changed the sport and America. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

It should come as no surprise that Soderholm- Difatte, a former CIA analyst and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), takes an almost exclusively statistical approach to baseball in the 1950s, often considered the game's Golden Age. For those who followed baseball through the decade and observed the iconic figures who played or managed then Robinson, Mays, Mantle, Durocher, Stengel or even readers who know the era through Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer and other anecdote-rich narrative nonfiction, this emphasis on numbers is likely to seem, well, stultifyingly analytical. And yet, the author makes numerous valuable points, if, sometimes, between the numbers. He convincingly demonstrates, for example, that the fifties were a transitional time in such important aspects of play as relief pitching and platooning. He also makes a strong case that while integration fundamentally changed the game in the decade, the less-than-elite African American players did not always fare well. Don't come here looking for more wonderful anecdotes about the personalities who made fifties baseball great, but if you'd like to know the numbers behind how they achieved that greatness, this sabermetrician has the goods.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2015 Booklist

Soderholm-Difatte (a baseball aficionado and regular contributor to baseball publications) offers a fresh approach to a familiar topic, the post-WW II era in Major League Baseball. Instead of focusing on the changes that shaped Major League Baseball, he examines the multiple ways in which the sport evolved in the 15 years following the war. In so doing he allows readers to see how various changes came about as part of a broad spectrum of change within the national pastime. Since the appearance of black players on Major League rosters was the era's most tangible sign of change, the author bookends his volume with chapters on integration. Other changes include the disappearance of player-managers, the emergence of Casey Stengel, and the geographic shift to cities like Milwaukee and Los Angeles. Written in engaging prose, this interesting book takes readers on a chronological journey through those changes and aptly shows how integration was tough for many to accept long after Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. --Courtney Michelle Smith, Cabrini College