Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago

In the summer of 1919 three men (two white, one black) decide that the Chicago White Sox will be the first major league team in the twentieth century to sign a black player to a major league contract...
Set before the broad shoulders of Chicago, Shadow Ball tells the story of Rube Foster, African American owner of the Chicago-American Giants; Charles Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox; and Sam Weiss, their silent go-between. Their plans are complicated by the eruption of the August 1919 race riot in Chicago, as seen and heard by Kid Douglas, a Mississippi blues singer newly arrived from the Delta. Blues, baseball, race-relations, love, hope and despair ring loud in this tale.