When the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians (the team has since been renamed the Guardians) met in the 2016 World Series, most of the media attention centered on the fact that the Cubs stood to win their first championship in over a century. But baseball fans knew that both teams in that series were hoping to end droughts. Cleveland’s last World Series win was all the way back in 1948. Luke Epplin’s book “Our Team” tells the story of that title-winning team through the lens of four very different men whose paths converged in Cleveland that fateful season: Bob Feller, Bill Veeck, Larry Doby, and Satchel Paige.
Feller was a wunderkind farmboy whose blazing fastball got him into the major leagues before his high school graduation. He racked up huge totals in wins and strikeouts. From an early age sportswriters and fans predicted he would set all-time records before he was done, but the war intervened and Feller lost nearly four full seasons of his prime. By 1948 he was a grizzled veteran of 29 years of age, whose arm could only be relied on sporadically.
Bill Veeck was the team’s owner. At a time when baseball clubs weren’t billion-dollar entities, Veeck managed to essentially work his way up into the owner’s box. As a result he retained a common touch with the fanbase and worked tirelessly to keep them entertained and coming to ballgames. He continued to do so even after losing a leg after contracting a life-threatening infection overseas during his brief wartime service.
Desperate to win, and not having any racial prejudice himself, Veeck long toyed with the idea of integrating Major League Baseball. Epplin writes that, years before he purchased the Indians, he made a bid to buy the Philadelphia Phillies. The purchase was scuttled in its infancy when the other owners and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis discovered that Veeck planned to immediately sign several Negro League stars, believing that it would catapult the struggling Phillies to the pennant.
Veeck finally managed to integrate the American League by signing Larry Doby, a young star of the Newark Eagles of the Negro Leagues. Though Doby’s name is not as celebrated today as Jackie Robinson’s, he faced the same racism and ostracization from opponents and even teammates that Robinson struggled with in Brooklyn. Rushed straight to the majors in 1947, he struggled mightily as a rookie, seemingly justifying the skepticism of many fans. Forced to sleep in separate hotels and with no black teammates to spend time with, he struggled with the pressure and loneliness of his historic status. In 1948, however, he managed to learn to play the outfield and stop swinging wildly at pitches outside the strike zone, becoming an integral part of Cleveland’s success.
Lastly, Epplin profiles the great Satchel Paige, whose extraordinary career was marked by both triumph and tragedy. Undoubtedly one of the greatest athletes to ever play baseball, Paige was in his forties when Major League Baseball finally integrated, and thought to be too old to be a candidate himself, even though he continued to use his fastball to baffle both Negro Leaguers and Major League players competing in barnstorming exhibitions throughout the offseason. Paige was a lucrative attraction on these tours, having a loyal base of black fans and piquing the curiosity of white fans with his gaudy achievements and the humorous embellishments to his character. Many of the barnstorming tours that helped enrich Paige were in fact organized by Bob Feller, one of the first athletes to consider himself a businessman as well as a player. Paige in fact sued Feller at one point for underpayment.
Veeck, with his competitive nature and his desire to make baseball fun for the fans, was naturally drawn to Paige, but he resisted signing him for years, convinced like others that he was too old. But when the Indians found themselves in desperate need of pitching in the middle of the 1948 season, Veeck arranged a tryout where Paige wowed player-manager Lou Boudreau with his speed and control and finally broke into the majors at 42 years old. He had some spectacular games for Cleveland, though late season struggles relegated him to the bullpen, where he made minimal impact on the championship run. Paige did, however, become the first black pitcher to appear in the World Series.
Epplin’s focus on these four men yields some fascinating insights, mainly by placing these men in the context of their time and the crux of the issue of integration. In Epplin’s portrayal, Feller is a man who considers himself too fair to be racially prejudiced, but his bias in favor of his own narrative of hard work and achievement prevented him from extending grace to black players who had to struggle through much more than he did. Even as Doby earned a place in the Cleveland lineup, Feller remained convinced that there were few Negro Leaguers who could make it in the Major Leagues. There is also the sadness of the lack of camaraderie between Doby and Paige. Though Doby may have been thrilled to have a black teammate, the large age gap between the two men and their vastly different personalities kept them from becoming close. Doby, like Jackie Robinson, had been told that he had to at all times remain a quiet, calm, respectable man in order to facilitate further integration of baseball. Paige, with his wisecracks and outlandish statements, made Doby nervous and, perhaps, slightly jealous.
The framing does have some drawbacks. There is surprisingly little focus on the season itself, so superfans looking for a blow-by-blow account of the pennant chase may be disappointed. Epplin also gives perhaps too little attention to Lou Boudreau, who won the AL MVP award while also managing the team. Though not as historically meaningful as Feller, Doby, or Paige, and not as colorful a character as Veeck, Boudreau was obviously integral to the team’s success that year.
Still, Epplin weaves a satisfying tale out of the lives of these four men, elucidating a complicated time in both the history of baseball and the history of America. Our Team is a book that should be read by all fans of the national pastime.