The End of Baseball: A Novel by Peter Schilling | eBook

Publishers Weekly

With this debut, sportswriter Schilling has written one of the best baseball novels since Howard Frank Mosher's Waiting for Teddy Williams. Using actual events, Schilling has fictionalized a fantasy scenario in baseball history-the integration of black players into the major leagues in 1944. Bill Veeck Jr., a Marine veteran from a prestigious baseball family, buys the Philadelphia Athletics in 1943, becoming the youngest man to ever own a major league club. Veeck is a genius at publicity and promotion who wants to win the World Series-but using black players. He signs the best of the Negro League to the Athletics, against all conventional feeling and the opposition of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the vicious commissioner of baseball. The Athletics romp through the 1944 season behind the on-and-off diamond antics of real-life stars like Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Roy Campanella, with Veeck struggling to raise money, avoid race riots and flummox Judge Landis. This exciting, fast-paced story is a fine commentary on baseball lore, race relations, and American sentiment during World War II, and it will have the reader hanging on every pitch, wondering how Veeck and his players will overcome racial discrimination to prove they can play in the major leagues. (May)

Hardball Times

The End of Baseball is more than a simple story; it also serves as a reminder of the consequences of indulging, rather than battling against the darker natures that exist within us all…. Peter Schilling Jr. deserves the highest of marks for creating a fictitious history that feels like the genuine article.
— John Brattain

Frommers Book Reviews

An imaginative, thought-provoking novel.

Kirkus Reviews

A flamboyant visionary tries to make baseball history. Veteran sports journalist and debut novelist Schilling offers a compassionate, enjoyable re-imagining of the early days of baseball. The year 1944 finds oddball baseball promoter Bill Veeck returning from World War II sans one leg but emboldened by a mission to create the first black Major League Baseball team. To surmount the obvious challenges, Veeck pulls the wool over Commissioner Kenesaw Landis's eyes by packing the Philadelphia Athletics with the most prominent athletes from the Philadelphia Stars, a Negro League team. Veeck's dream lineup includes rapid-fire pitcher Satchel Paige, who has a "zeppelin-sized ego" to match, Cuban secret weapon Mart'n Dihigo and a doomed giant of a hitter, Josh Gibson, whose colossal swing rivals Babe Ruth's. Determined to gather only the best players, Veeck soon gets the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who thinks the promoter's great experiment is a communist plot. The players, meanwhile, are competing with each other; misbehaving in the harsh glare of the national press; and trying to play their best game in American communities where bigotry is threatening to turn ballparks into riot zones. Among the backdrop of patriotic elation, pre-civil rights racism and Cold War paranoia, Schilling's novel offers a deeply inspirational story of faith. A terrific tale. Agent: Paul Bresnick/Paul Bresnick Agency

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The world of baseball during World War II provides the atmospheric background for this inspired debut novel that mingles fact and fantasy…Schilling's what-if tale brilliantly re-creates a bygone era.

Baseball Book Review

Schilling hits a home run with his debut novel.

City Pages

The End of Baseball, when on the field, is one of those books where pages can flip in wonderful three or four pages chunks. Schilling has a great talent for description of in-game storytelling, and also for getting inside both the respective heads of his players and the mood of the dugout.

Columbus Dispatch

No baseball season would be complete without at least one terrific work of fiction, and Publishers Weekly thinks this is it: 'an exciting, fast-paced story' that is 'a fine commentary on baseball lore, race relations and American sentiment during World War II.' Schilling makes the legendary promoter Bill Veeck the star of his novel, a man so intent on winning a pennant that he recruits stars from the Negro League to play on his club in 1944. It isn't the way things were but the way they should have been.

Toronto Globe and Mail

Of all sports, rivalled perhaps only by boxing, baseball has the strongest links with literature. Philip Roth, Mark Harris, Bernard Malamud and W. P. Kinsella are among the game's literati. They're joined by Peter Schilling Jr. in The End of Baseball (Ivan R. Dee, 337 pages, $25), set in the war year of 1944, as Bill Veeck (a real and important figure), in the face of opposition from the likes of commie-in-every-closet FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, raids the Negro Leagues for stars like JoshGibson and Satchell Paige.

New York Post

No, we're not talking about the Mets collapse last year. In Schilling's novel, set in the 1944 season, baseball maverick Bill Veeck buys the Philadelphia Athletics and, determined to field the best team, recruits ballplayers from the Negro Leagues for his roster (he reportedly considered doing this in real life). Of course, the establishment—the cranky commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis and even J. Edgar Hoover—is aghast. But readers are sure to cheer both Veeck and players such as Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige in this alternate take on baseball history.

Associated Content

Peter Schilling Jr.…writes a gripping novel that diehard fans and those in search of a great story alike will love.

Tampa Tribune

Schilling’s talent in this novel is the voice he gives the players–they are believable… Schilling succeeds mightily.

Winston-Salem Journal

The End of Baseball is a hearty feast for the baseball glutton. Schilling has researched his subject well and has produced a historically water-tight tale, leaving the willing reader to ponder 'What if?'

Frommer's Book Reviews

An imaginative, thought-provoking novel.

The Rake - Brad Zellar

Just as the exploits of the great players of the Negro Leagues have assumed the status of mythology, the Bill Veeck of the stories most of us have received secondhand has always seemed like a character from the imagination of a first rate novelist. Peter Schilling's fine book stirs all that wonderful, received folklore into a classic what-if tale. People always say baseball is a game where anything can happen, but there was a time when the most magical thing that might have happened, didn't; The End of Baseball is so engaging and convincing that it accomplishes something truly special: it makes you wish desperately it were true.

Jonathan Eig

Peter Schilling's historical baseball novel is a blast. Like a Satchel Paige flutter ball, it amuses and beguiles with every sharp turn. It's perfect for baseball lovers, but it will entertain anyone who loves a good story. Filled with wonderful characters and lively writing, The End of Baseball is the best baseball novel I've read in years.

Jim Bouton

The End of Baseball reminded me of the books on the shelf at my grandfather's house. Schilling captures the period beautifully. A wonderful story.

Paul Dickson

The End of Baseball captures the mood and feel of a time like no other baseball novel I have ever read. You are hooked quickly and for the duration. It reminds me of the thrill I got when I first read E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime.

Peter Golenbock

I always wished I could have spent time in the Negro Leagues, and I always wanted to hang out with Bill Veeck. In Peter Schilling's work of inventive history, The End of Baseball, I was allowed to do both, and I thank him for that. If you ever wondered what might have happened if Veeck had succeeded in an attempt to buy the A's and fill the roster with Negro League stars, here's a chance to find out. Enjoy the journey.

Brad Snyder

Peter Schilling takes one of the great 'what-might-have-been' episodes in baseball history and brings it to life. This is the best baseball novel I've read about this era since Mark Winegartner's Veracruz Blues. A fine achievement.

Booklist - Wes Lukowsky

In the ultimate 'woulda-coulda-shoulda' story, the vaunted color line is no match for Veeck's showmanship and unquenchable spirit.

(Salt Lake City) Desert Morning News

The author is an experienced sports journalist who has written a delightful historical novel about his favorite sport. It is about the team that 'almost was' in an extraordinary baseball season of 1944. The protagonist is Bill Veeck, a maverick promoter, who buys the Philadelphia Athletics. Because he is hungry to win a pennant, Veeck drops the white players and secretly recruits the legendary stars of the Negro Leagues. The result is the greatest team ever to play the game. Schilling recounts behind-the-scenes stories that include real-life columnist Walter Winchell, J. Edgar Hoover, and such players as Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Martin Dihigo, Cool 'Papa' Bell, Willie Wells and Buck Leonard.

Baltimore Sun - Allen Barra

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, some baseball novels see things as they are and ask why; Pete Schilling Jr.'s brilliantly conceived The End of Baseball sees things that weren't and imagines what could have been. Starting from an unconfirmed baseball legend—that maverick baseball owner Bill Veeck once tried to buy the Philadelphia A's and roster them with Negro League stars—Schilling re-imagines post-1944 America in the wake of an event infinitely more convulsive than Jackie Robinson's signing by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and J. Edgar Hoover (who think Veeck is a Communist) are not happy, and the city of Philadelphia and, eventually, all of America are changed forever by the entry of Negro League stars Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Cuban great Martin Dihigo into the national spotlight. The best baseball novel so far this century.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Harry Levins

Mainly, as somebody in baseball puts it, The End of Baseball sails straight down central. As somebody else in baseball used to say, it's a winner.

Hardball Times - John Brattain

Minnesota Game Day - Chrissie Bonnes

The detail paid to each character, making each unique, and making many both hero and villain, will mesmerize any reader.

Courant.Com - Richard Kamins

Even if you're not a lover of baseball, this book is still a bracing reminder of how people were mistreated just for the color of their skin yet still chose to play a game that brought them great joy….Schilling does a great job of taking the readers inside the skin and minds of the men who really wanted (and deserved) the respect of baseball fans around the world.

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture - William E. Aiken

Offers a glimpse into a world that could have been, and fuels the debate about Bill Veeck and the integration of baseball.

The End of Baseball: A Novel

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