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Bad Penny: How a Maverick Owner Helped Break Baseball's Color Barrier

2024

Synopsis

Bad Penny is a behind-the-scenes look at how Black athletes broke through the color barrier of the most revered American institution - Major League Baseball - and in the process, reveals this country's tumultuous history of racism.

The story is told through the career of baseball owner Bill Veeck, known as the P.T. Barnum of baseball due to his remarkable publicity stunts. But Veeck evolves from his carnival-barking beginnings to a dedicated civil rights activist who walks four miles in Martin Luther King's funeral procession, despite his wooden peg leg.

Some of America's most colorful characters come to life in Bad Penny through their interactions with Veeck.

Satchel Paige is a flamboyant Black pitcher who dazzles crowds - white and Black - for decades in barnstorming games that draw tens of thousands of fans. Paige is not allowed to play in the all-white Major Leagues, which leaves a soul-deadening emptiness. However, at almost 50 years old, when most ballplayers are long retired, Paige is allowed entry in the white Major Leagues. Will he secure what he feels is his rightful place as the greatest pitcher of all time? To do so, he'll have to overcome a despised manager, a known Ku Klux Klan member.

Larry Doby became the first Black player in the American League in 1947. Doby hit a homer to win a World Series game and came home to parades in his honor. But he was stonewalled by residents when he tried to buy a house in his hometown near white neighborhoods.

Eddie Gaedel was a 3-foot-7 baseball player whose one at-bat became one of the sport's most iconic photos.
These are among the storylines of Bad Penny, the 100,000-word historical fiction novel. Bad Penny belongs on the bookshelves under the "social justice," "historical fiction," and "sports" sections. It would hit the bookshelves when America is reckoning with its racial past.

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