In the shadows of the diamond

Considering the legion of colorful characters with impossibly wonderful names - Zack Wheat, Enos Slaughter, Kirby Puckett - and a history overflowing with episodes of spectacular achievement and fantastic turns of events, it is no wonder that baseball has become an important American mythology. The immense body of journalistic and literary works on baseball bears tribute to the richness and variety of this aspect of the baseball legacy. Furthermore, there exists a strong oral tradition among fans which both feeds and is fed by the written accounts of baseball's past. Combined, the two continually recreate, in ever sharper delineation, the comedy, triumph, and tragedy of the baseball legend. The problem is, sometimes the legends are lies. In the Shadows of the Diamond: Hard Times in the National Pastime explores the reality behind the myths. In doing so, this book throws light on another aspect of the baseball story equal in importance to the folklore, that baseball is also about human beings, flesh and blood. And that somewhere within all the larger-than-life tales there exists a history of events, a collection of facts concerning what really happened between the white lines, and how it was viewed and interpreted at the time, and what the real implications were in the lives of the men involved. This book reveals how the lives, reputations and careers of ballplayers were damaged, diverted, and, in several particularly sad cases, destroyed by unfortunate timing, fateful misunderstanding and/or false representation. With In the Shadows of the Diamond: Hard Times in the National Pastime, historians Michael Santa Maria and James Costello have undertaken the daunting task of setting the record straight at last by providing us with the true accounts of baseball's tragedies, victimizations, and remarkable comebacks.