by George Ehring (Author)
As the Great Depression of the 1930s bit hard into North America, heroes - sometimes from the most unlikely quarters - emerged to distract and entertain the public. Some of the greatest earned their status on a baseball field, and in Heroes in Hard Times you will find two of baseball's most talented and colorful pitchers: Dizzy Dean, ace of the St. Louis Cardinals, and Satchel Paige, star of the Negro Leagues. Though Dizzy and Satchel shared a childhood in poverty, a career in baseball, and future recognition in the Hall of Fame, they lived in parallel universes - one white, one black, a world apart. In this lively work of historical fiction their worlds eventually collide as they compete against each other to determine who really was best. Heroes in Hard Times is more than the story of Satchel Paige and Dizzy Dean. In this beautifully-written portrait of the Great Depression, you'll also find John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, and many others. Baseball fans will love Heroes in Hard Times for its accurate recounting of the 1933 and 1934 seasons, and other readers will be drawn into its colorful characters and vivid painting of the Depression era.
Author Biography
George Ehring grew up with baseball, 25 miles from New York City, in the era when Mickey and Whitey and Willie didn't need last names. Out fishing on the Atlantic Ocean with his dad, listening to Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto call Yankee games on the radio, he had usually lost his allowance by the third inning, making ten-cent bets he somehow knew he would lose, and wondering how his father could just know the next pitch would be a strike when the pitcher went 3 -0. In that way, he learned about the game and about life. As an adult, he travelled to countless major and minor league ballparks across North America, scorebook in hand, watching emerging talent and fading stars, and writing about baseball and the men who bring it to life.