Apr 14 2022 28 mins 3
April 15, 2022 marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking through Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Weeks later — less celebrated, but perhaps as transformative — a young, soft-spoken Larry Doby became the first Black American League player, as he joined the Cleveland Indians. Unlike Robinson, Doby had no minor league easing-in season. In the Negro leagues one day — suited up for Cleveland the next. It was a lonely and harsh entry but one that would forever change the game of baseball.
Joining Doby the following summer was Negro League superstar pitcher and fan favorite, the crafty and mercurial Satchel Page. They, along with the All American entrepreneurial pitching phenom Bob Feller and innovative, passionate and indefatigable owner Bill Veeck, became Cleveland’s interracial “Fab Four” in a time of prejudice and segregation.
Set against a booming and bustling industrial Cleveland, Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball is the tale of how the unlikely confluence of these four narratives formed a once-in-a-lifetime alchemy that uprooted the traditions of the Major Leagues and moved it into the modern day, while delivering the one and only World Series pennant for Indians in 1948.
I am honored to say the story of "Our Team" is from Ohio and am privileged to welcome its author Luke Epplin.
