Saturday, February 6, 2021

Review of "Comeback Season"

The premise of this book sounded fascinating so it was one I decided to pick up as it is always great to learn more about the Negro Leagues, especially now that they are finally recognized as Major League.  This book about a teenager striking up friendships with many former Negro League players that turned into something bigger for everyone is a GREAT book that I recommend for all.  Here is my review of "Comeback Season"

Title/Author:

“Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players” by Cam Perron

Tags:

Baseball, professional, memoir, Negro Leagues, History

Publish date:

March 30, 2021

Length:

272 pages

Rating:

5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review:

Cam Perron, a white teenager from the Boston area, started his most successful project by doing what many teenage boys do – collect items such as baseball cards.  This hobby became something bigger when Cam received cards for players from the Negro Leagues.  Intrigued by their history, he started searching for these men to connect to get their autographs. These requests for autographs turned into regular correspondence with some of them.  As Cam talked and wrote to them, some of the stories these players shared ended with wishes to connect with old friends and teammates. Cam obliged as well as he could and eventually he and these players became like one big family, culminating in the creation of a Negro Leagues museum in Birmingham, Alabama.  Cam’s story is an engrossing and wonderful story that is a joy to read. 

At the beginning of Cam’s interest in connecting with these players was met with some skepticism as many of these men, having endured years of racism when playing the game they loved, did not respond.  Those that did, however, ended up being overjoyed to see someone recognize them and wishing to listen to their stories.  While Cam writes about his connections at this time with joy, it is clear, as he describes later, that he wanted to do more than just have friendships with these players. He teams up with a Negro Leagues researcher, Dr. Layton Revel, in order to find documentation to prove that these players did play long enough to collect a pension from Major League Baseball.  Cam and Dr. Revel were successful in doing this for several players.

Their efforts gained the attention of the media and even more former Negro League players, which made Cam and Dr. Revel even more determined to not only gain pensions for those who earned them, but also to have a reunion of these players while they were still alive at the museum dedicated to them.  It should be noted that this is separate from the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City – this is a different museum, where the main attraction is a large case of baseball, each one signed by a player from the later era of the Negro Leagues.

This is one aspect of both Cam’s project and the book that is quite different from other books and research on the Negro Leagues.  Many of the players highlighted in the book played in the Negro Leagues after the integration of the Major Leagues.  Because of the unwritten quotas for Black players set by teams and also the view that the Negro Leagues were prime developing grounds for future Major League players, the players of this era may not be as recognizable to the regular fan, but make no mistake, these players were excellent at the game, they loved playing, and their stories are just as entertaining and enlightening as those of the more famous Negro League stars.

One of the players whose story is featured in the book is James “Cowboy” Atterbury who played in for the Philadelphia Stars in 1962 and 1963.  While his story is one that is uplifting because he got that chance to play professionally with the Stars, it is also one that sadly displays the racism and the discrimination he and other Negro League players, even as late as the 1960s.  Cam lets the players tell their stories themselves frequently in the book which is a great decision on his part.  It made the book a fantastic account of not only the players and the Negro Leagues after integration of the Major Leagues, but also an uplifting book of friendships that go well beyond baseball.  One doesn’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book.

I wish to thank Gallery Books for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Format Read:

E-book (Kindle)                                                                                                                                

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Comeback-Season-Unlikely-Friendship-Greatest/dp/1982153601/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr
 

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