Just SO interesting! I have been interested in the negro leagues for a short time but this caught my eye and the research here is next level! Perfect for the baseball buff or newbie!

Comeback Season is a book for collectors and young entrepreneurs looking for a little inspiration. Personally, I had a lot of trouble with it.

The story here centers on Cam, a young white boy from Boston who finds himself enraptured by the stories of the few remaining players of the Negro Leagues. First and foremost a collector of memorabilia, Cam quickly discovers that the rarity of autographs from these players who were treated so poorly by Major League Baseball means they can fetch much, much higher prices than the Red Sox and Bruins players who seem to view autograph signings as their least favorite chore. But along the way, something unexpected happens, and this kid who got into the game for the money (which is extremely apparent over the course of the book) begins to actually care about the players he is low-key exploiting.

While Cam never stopped collecting memorabilia and flipping it for huge profit, he did re-center a lot of his energy on helping the players once he came to realize the dire financial circumstances many found themselves in. He tells of how his research helped qualify players for pensions, connect them to lost friends and family, and bring respect and notoriety to forgotten careers. And he did it on the side with very little compensation, oftentimes at a loss. I appreciate that for his public speaking engagements, he often brought along an actual player. These are all great things to be celebrated, and it is especially laudable that he accomplished all of this in middle and high school. But it is exceptionally uncomfortable to read this book and soak in all of the privilege this young man has and only slowly begins to somewhat acknowledge. This young man is clearly making six figures a year by the time he gets out of college--likely more than these players are getting in lumpsum back-pensions. And he doesn't seem to feel any type of way about that. In fact, he complains at one point about a player requesting $50 for an autograph and brags about talking him down to $30 and then turning around and flipping it for $150. How much cognitive dissonance does it take to paint yourself as the hero in this story? Pay the man his due.

Overall, I could have done with a lot with more baseball and player profiles and a lot less self-appreciation and colorblind mentality. It astonishes me that for all of Cam's work to become the leading authority on Negro Leaguers, he uses that platform to write a book about himself and further enrich himself, rather than to write about the Negro League or the people who played in it and share revenue. Hard pass.

My appreciation to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the eARC in exchange for the review.

Though the breakdown of the color barrier in Major League Baseball was necessary and inevitable, it came at a cost to the Negro Leagues, which until then had been vibrant showcases of Black excellence. In the mid- to late-1940s, when some of the best Black players left for the majors, their fans went with them, causing attendance at Negro League games to shrivel. Players who didn’t get tapped for the majors saw their careers sidelined.

It was those former Negro League players who deeply fascinated a young Cam Perron after he first learned about them through baseball cards. In his book, “Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship With the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Players,” the Tulane graduate chronicles his transition from a precocious young baseball fan to a friend and advocate of scores of former professional Negro League players.

Perron was in middle school when he first contacted these players seeking autographs, but as he began speaking with them regularly, friendships developed, and the players told him their remarkable stories of glories and hardships. Perron realized that the stories were part of an endangered piece of American history, and so he made it his mission to contact every former Negro League player still living and get their stories firsthand.

Over the years, Black sportswriters and others have sought recognition for the Negro Leagues. In this book, Perron, who is white, demonstrates a passion for this history and a respect for the players. He even assisted in securing pensions for eligible players, digging up proof that a former player had played the requisite four years in order to earn a pension from MLB. A few of them have space in the book to tell their own stories, which makes for meaningful reading. A simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming tale, “Comeback Season” gives the spotlight to these talented players whose contributions have long gone unsung.

This book is about a white teenager who details the journey of how he came to be a well known Negro Leagues researcher. Overall, this book does what it sets out to do. He details how he came to be a collector, how he got in contact with current, then former major league players and ultimately former Negro Leagues players. He details how he tracked them down via online directories, asked them for autographs, and with some befriending them. He ultimately would help many get their pensions from Major League Baseball. This is an amazing thing, because many of these guys live in poverty and need every penny they can get. He also helped to set up annual reunions for former Negro Leaguers, and got these guys in touch with each other over the phone as well. Some hadn't seen each other in as much as fifty years!

My favorite thing about this book is learning more about the players. Some of them in their own words. I wish this would've been a bigger part of this book. I wasn't too keen, however, on the fact that some of the quotes from researchers or Cam's mom took up so much space. It would've been much better if these were summarized. Also, more of his relationships with the players. These guys just didn't magically trust a 14 year old kid who randomly calls them on the phone. How did he build that trust with these guys who are in some cases 65 years older or more than him. That's what I wanted out of this. Also, this is co-written with a Pulitzer Prize journalist. Yet it sounds more like a book written with a junior high student. It dragged on in some cases and I guess I just expected tighter writing with that caliber of co-author.

Thank you to Gallery Books, authors Cam Perron and Nick Chiles, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I've been really torn over how to rate this book.

This story was more of a memoir / biography of Cam, and came across almost like an infomercial for his brand. Don't get me wrong, his brand has some good things about it. He helped many former players receive their pensions from MLB. He has obviously made some connection with many of them. He's young and bringing this history to a new generation while some people involved got to witness it and see their history celebrated.

AND! Almost no Negro Leagues scholarship deals with the period in which most of these players played - AFTER "integration" by Jackie Robinson in 1947. More of this please!!!!

But.

Something here just doesnt sit quite right. Much is made throughout the book of the selfless nature of the project, how Dr. Revel turned down payment from MLB, and that absolutely nobody was taking advantage if the players. But, then a couple of examples:

Halfway through the book when Cam talks about contacting Charlie Dees. He tells how Charlie Dees doesnt sign autographs often. That makes his autograph rare, and that he knows that collectors will pay over $100 for his autograph. See, it's not just about Charlie Dees, but also about Charlie Dees being the last holdout to complete a set of autographs. When he talks to Charlie, Mr. Dees says “It’s fifty dollars an autograph. Whitey Ford charges fifty dollars; I charge fifty dollars.” The next line: "I thought to myself, Whoa, Charlie, Whitey Ford is in the Hall of Fame— you are no Whitey Ford." Cam then talks him down to $30 an autograph, knowing that the autograph is worth more than that, and than the $50 that he just insulted.

Later, he speaks of Frank Marsh, who was skeptical of Cam and Dr. Revel, saying he believed they were profiting off their endeavors. Cam avers that this couldn't be further from the truth, but that the concern was understandable since Marsh may have heard about people swindling Cool Papa Bell or "just had a lifelong distrust of white people." Apparently Marsh "lightened up" after they helped him get the pension that he expected to qualify for.

More lightly.

There's not much of the Negro Leagues or its players here. There are bits where some get a few pages to tell a story. Each of these follow a pattern: basic outline of life, anecdote about playing in the Negro Leagues, and Cam is awesome! In total, these accounts make up a very small portion of the book. The first two pieces of these vignettes *were* awesome, and I wanted more. The last would have been much improved in the way the whole book would have been improved - SHOW us these relationships between the players and Cam. I didn't leave the book feeling like I knew many players very well or the type of friendship they had with Cam and Cam had with them. There are things like - he and I room together every year at the reunion. He helped me get my pension. Nothing that actually *shows* the relationship the way we get the powerful stories about playing in the Negro Leagues.

And the writing style is a bit tedious. It is very rambly, and not much different in writing style than the paper Cam included that he wrote when he was 14.

On some of the themes here that make me uncomfortable - I highly recommend reading this book regarding power dynamics like the one Cam has here:

Check out this book on Goodreads: Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26586664-long-past-slavery

Comeback Season is a memoir and history of Cam Perron's involvement with baseball fandom which led to his befriending by many former Negro League Baseball players and the establishment of a hall of fame museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Due out 30th March 2021 from Simon & Schuster on their Gallery Books imprint, it's 272 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats.

This is one of those engaging real life stories which I really felt on a deep emotional level. The fact that the author chose to let the athletes speak for themselves added a lot of impact. I was often uncomfortable reading their matter-of-fact stories of absolutely horrible racism and inequality (I got chills reading about "Cowboy" Atterbury and teammates' encounter face to face with the KKK). Their stories of perseverance and dignity in the face of daunting odds are inspiring. I'm so glad that the author and others worked very hard to document and negotiate the pensions many of them were owed by major league baseball.

Four and a half stars. I would heartily recommend this to sports fans (especially the ones who love knowing minutiae about their favorite athletes and teams), readers of biography and memoirs, fans of history. This would also make a good acquisition for public or school library use.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This was a beautiful account of the history of the Negro League. It describes the heartbreaking reality of the former players of this league, and the struggles they are going through after their baseball careers.

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 Hall of Fame 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.

One does not have to be a baseball fan to love this book. Cam's story is very inspirational and is a testament that it is possible, regardless of age, to make a difference in the world. As a baseball fan and having an interest in the history of the Negro Leagues this was a book that I could not put down and made me smile and at times brought tears to my eyes. My hat is off for what Cam has done to help so many former Negro League players. His efforts have helped so many, who due to discrimination, never got the chance to display their talents as a part of Major League baseball. Thank you for sharing your experiences!