Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players

Perron debuts with an inspiring account of how he came to help preserve the legacy of Negro League veterans. When he was 12 years old in 2007, the author, an avid (and white) baseball card collector, encountered a set featuring players from the Negro League. Intrigued, he began tracking down surviving players through an online forum, and what began as requests for signed memorabilia turned into a series of correspondences between Perron and several of the players. In these conversations, he learned about how their baseball successes were curtailed by racism in Major League Baseball: “They would tell us to our face that they already had enough colored or Cuban ballplayers,” one player recalled. Perron’s research aided in documenting the Negro Leaguers’ playing careers, which helped them secure pensions from the MLB, an overdue compensation that saved many elderly former athletes from destitution. Along the way, Perron was involved in organizing the first annual Negro League Players Reunion and, later, the founding of a Negro League museum. Perron’s ability to channel his childhood interests into something meaningful for others is moving, and his extraordinary account uplifts. Even those who aren’t sports fans will root for this galvanizing story. (Mar.)