Book Pick: "The Victory Season" by Robert Weintraub

Subtitled "The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age", this book is an indispensable study of the 1946 baseball season in the context of America's post war labor strife, greedy owners who held underpaid players as virtual slaves via the Reserve Clause and the cataclysmic beginning of integrated baseball with Jackie Robinson's one and only minor league season with the International League's Montreal Royals. Besides deftly interweaving the saga of the Major and Minor League seasons, Weintraub chronicles when the top players Williams, Feller, Greenburg, DiMaggio plus hundreds of others gave up their prime years to win the war. Two major leaguers died in combat and many good ones were too badly injured to resume playing a kid's fantasy. But the biggest stars were protected and all had terrific 1946 seasons, leading to a fabulous World Series showdown when Pesky Paused and Slaughter Didn't, winning the Series for the vastly underdog Redbirds over the 104 game winning Beantowners.

Just like blacks came home from overseas with renewed passion to end discrimination, the major leaguers took action against the Walmart style owners who paid little and simply fired complaining players who had no freedom to sell their talents to other teams. Up popped Jorge Pasquel who enticed about a dozen stars to jump to his Mexican League for piles of cash. When Stan the Man Musial turned him down the tide was broken and the exodus ended with the jumpers banned from the Majors till 1949. Still seeking relief, a number of players joined labor organizer Bob Murphy's baseball players union till his Pittsburg Pirate strike vote before a Dodger game narrowly failed, dooming Murphy and the players' dream of economic relief which didn't arrive till 1975. Two surprising factoids: Joe DiMaggio's father was left jobless when Uncle Sam prevented this Italian alien from traveling the six miles to his fishing job because they feared Axis collaboration. And everyman's friend Bill Veeck, owner of the Indians, voted with the other 14 bigoted owners to demand Branch Rickey not integrate the Big Leagues in '47. Say it ain't so, Bill.