Simulating Satchel: A What-If History of Integrated Major League Baseball in 1934 - Softcover

Graf, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476698058 ISBN 13: 9781476698052

Publisher: McFarland, 2025

Synopsis

In this book, the author creates a multi-dimensional simulation, a "Utopian Baseball Fantasy," to explore the context and significance of a 1934 major league season featuring integration. Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige and nearly 100 of his Negro Leagues contemporaries are freed from the ban of the sport's color line and added to the exclusionary American and National Leagues. It features previews in a condensed preseason Sweet & Fleet's yearbook, including commentary, rosters, predictions, and interviews. Pennant races from opening day through the World Series are chronicled in the fictional journalism of The Blackball Watcher as Dizzy Dean, Babe Ruth, and notables from the entertainment world co-star with Paige. The scribes, including fictionalized real-life reporters, examine with the author and season ticket bearing readers an alternative baseball integration story that opens the way to more deeply consider the issue of racial justice in baseball and beyond.

About this title

About the Author

John Graf is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Negro Leagues Research Committee and has been a local newspaper sportswriter and radio reporter/announcer. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Edition details

• Publisher: McFarland
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1476698058
• ISBN 13: 9781476698052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120