Shut Out - by Howard Bryant (Paperback)

About the Book

In a story of race and baseball in Boston, Bryant shows how the Red Sox passed up Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays and developed an enduring legacy of racism.

Book Synopsis

With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, Shut Out has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.

Review Quotes

Sport is not always a metaphor . . . but in this instance the story of race and the Red Sox is an exceedingly accurate mirror of the story of race and Boston, and thus race and America. --Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

"One of the best baseball books I have ever read, and in fact one of the best non-fiction books I have read in years. To simply call it a baseball book is to do it a disservice, in that people interested in American history, race relations in America, and simply human nature might not read it, which would be their loss." --Lisa Winston, USA Today's Sports Weekly

"Shut Out...is the first book detailing and analyzing the racial problems of the Red Sox...it is required reading for anyone who cares about the history of racial prejudice and the game of baseball." --Louis P. Masur, The Nation

About the Author

Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine and the author of Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, and The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron. He is the editor of The Best American Sports Writing 2017. He appears regularly on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, ESPN First Take, Outside the Lines, and serves as sports correspondent for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.