Well I guess the Twins aren’t playing as bad as last year. I love the game of baseball. I’ve followed the Twins since ’62 or so and told my boring stories of the early days of the team to many a youngster. But there was one era of baseball I wish I had been there to witness and that’s the play of the Negro Leagues of the ‘30’s.

There is a book on baseball that came out about a year ago in hard cover and for the life of me I don’t know how I missed it. Now in soft cover, “Color Blind” is a biography of integrated baseball years before Jackie Robinson set foot on the baseball diamond for the Dodgers. Where was this integrated team? Bismarck North Dakota. This semi-pro team was run by Neil Churchill, who owned a car dealership (along with Wickum Corwin), hotel, and other business adventures in the Capitol city. But his true love was baseball, and he loved to win. He would even place side bets (don’t tell Pete Rose) on his team. They had no nickname, just Bismarck. But some would later give the team the nickname “The Bismarck Churchills.”

Author Tom Dunkel obviously put in a tremendous amount of hours in research alone to recreate the 1930’s baseball scene in North Dakota. He follows young Quincy Troupe who didn’t find a home with the Chicago American Giants and got a ticket from Churchill to head to Bismarck. Also added to the team was Ted “Double-Duty” Radcliffe who was both a pitcher and a catcher. And a man who some have said was the greatest pitcher in baseball ever. Leroy “Satchel” Paige. Not only was he a great pitcher but he was a huge part of bringing fans through the turnstiles.

“Double-Duty” got that nickname from the double headers they often played. He would catch Paige the first game and then pitch the second. Paige’s fastballs were said to be so fast (how fast were they?) that Radcliffe had placed a piece of raw meat inside his catcher’s mitt to help take some of the sting out the fireball. Paige also was a showman in himself. Several times in the book, Dunkel mentions that Paige would prove how good of a pitcher he was and would ask the outfield not to come out of the dugout. After he struck the first two batters he told his infield to take a seat and another strikeout was rung up in the scorebook. Could you imagine any other manager, in any league, letting their pitcher take control like that? But Churchill had the confidence in him and rarely did Satchel disappoint the fans. The book takes us through the biggest rivalries for the Bismarck team, especially the squad from Jamestown. We also get a wonderfully detailed look at the Little World Series in Wichita and the fact that some team from the deep South was going to play this team from Bismarck that was split right down the middle. Six white and six black players.

Remember, this was the depression era, but sometimes crowds could be over 10,000 at these games in Wichita.

One thing on my bucket list is to visit the Negro League Museum in Kansas City someday. My congratulations to Tom Dunkel on this wonderful book. Not only does it put another notch in the North Dakota public relations belt but it gives a wonderful perspective of baseball in the days that some will never know.

The book is going to be a great Father’s Day present for someone next month.