Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review Sturm, a 2004 Eisner Award winner (with Guy Davis) for Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules and the author of The Golem's Mighty Swing (2001), returns to baseball in this graphic novel  about fictional  Emmet Wilson, a black farmer whose moment of glory as a player in the Negro Leagues came when he scored a run off the great pitcher Satchel Paige. Shortly after that, an injury ends Wilson's career and forces him to return to the life of a farmer. Strum focuses on Wilson's plight in the racist South of the 1940s, but also shows how his brief encounter with the legendary Paige iconic force against Jim Crow laws ovided lifelong inspiration. Tommaso's black-and-white artwork brings out the stark times and emotions with strong, powerful lines, but also grandly evokes Paige's quiet patience and his electrifying dynamism on the mound. This visually powerful, suspenseful, even profound story makes an excellent choice for readers interested in baseball or in the history of race relations. An appended section fills in more about the times and provides a springboard for discussion.

Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

Delivering far more than a conventional biography or baseball book, this graphic novel reveals the sport as an agent of hope in the Jim Crow South. Sturm (cofounder and director of the Center for Cartoon Studies, which partnered with Hyperion for this title) and Tommaso create a fictional African-American sharecropper who turns to Negro League baseball to support his family (“I’ll be makin’ more money than her daddy and my daddy put together. Ain’t braggin’ if it’s true”). The narrator hits a pitch off of Satchel Paige, but his career is cut short by injury and he returns to sharecropping. When he sends his son to school rather than have him work the fields, two white land-owning brothers mercilessly beat the boy; the book’s only full-spread art eschews the traditional square and rectangular panels used everywhere else and, devastatingly, shows father and son the next day, laboring in an endless field of cotton. The story culminates with Paige’s team coming to play against the all-white hometown favorites: the final score is less important than the chance to see Paige make quick work of the opposing batters. The narrative and duotone art are largely understated, with stark exceptions: among them, a lynching victim hanging from a tree and an epithet, directed at Paige, which roars across the infield. By emphasizing Paige’s influence and mythos rather than focusing on details about his life or career, Sturm and Tommaso offer a powerful and unique testimony to his legacy. Ages 10-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Dec.)

Kirkus Reviews

A bleak tale of failed baseball dreams, smoldering pride and Jim Crow in action. Clinging to the memory of his one at-bat against the great Satchel Paige, which resulted in a run but also a career-ending injury, the bitter narrator does his best to keep his son in school and out of the Alabama cotton fields. Though that battle is lost when the white landowners notice the boy's absence, and he is later found beaten by the side of the road, the father takes his son to see Paige's traveling team humble a white team that includes those same landlords, and then gives him the ball that the pitcher had given him years before: "I hope it reminds him of who he can be." Using only black, white and half-tone, Tommaso illustrates this graphic novel in a spare style that makes every figure from the lanky Paige on down seem isolated, and underscores the economical narrative's plainspoken harshness. Flanked by an introduction and an extensive set of historical notes, the episode imparts as clear a picture of the aggressive style of black baseball as it does of the realities of life in the rural Deep South in Paige's barnstorming heyday. It also rightly presents Paige as hero, showman and symbol. (Graphic fiction. 11-15)

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Satchel Paige, the great pitcher who flourished both in the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues, gets his own graphic novel. Told in flashback, the story takes place during the Jim Crow days where baseball was a genteel pastime, with the elderly seated under shady grandstands while black players abided the sickening and arbitrary restrictions placed on them. A period piece rather than a biography, the narrative captures the daily action of sporting contests against local racists and Paige's dignity and resilience. Baseball and small-town Southern life are both slow paced, and this title moves slowly too-frames depicting Paige tying his shoelace or pitches that go for balls may seem out of place, but they set the pace and mood for this affecting look into a near forgotten way of life. The stylized art is an absolute gem, resembling Chris Ware's work, with many repeated images and sequential frames that change only slightly across the page. Paige's mystique as a lifelong survivor in the brutal world of early- to mid-20th-century race relations and sport will attract readers. The depiction of what daily life was like during this period is the real subject of this title, and it should be a marvelous discovery for teens.-John Leighton, Brooklyn Public Library, NY Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Voice of Youth Advocates

Brief segments from Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige's life make up part of this graphic novel, including his storied career, his larger-than-life personality, and his on-field antics. Fictional ballplayer Emmet Wilson's story is also told. Wilson, the narrator, hurts his knee as a young player in the Negro Leagues after getting a hit off Satchel Paige. His career ruined, Wilson puts baseball out of his mind and returns home to his family and to a job as a sharecropper. The novel jumps between Paige's baseball career and high-flying life to Wilson's difficult existence and struggles with the Jim Crow laws of the thirties and forties. Paige later comes to Wilson's town to play a game against Wilson's bigoted bosses. The pitcher's performance ultimately gives Wilson and his young son hope and inspiration as to what one can become despite tough times and circumstances. This brief graphic novel packs a punch. The title may throw off readers as it is not strictly a Satchel Paige biography. It is both a well-written and a well-researched story of not only baseball but also of the segregated times that African Americans faced. The black-and-white artwork is simple yet dramatic, and both the words and the art mesh wonderfully together. Ultimately Wilson's story and the history of the times are more engaging than the baseball scenes. This book promises to be widely read and is made to order for middle school boys.-Jeff Mann.