VEECK! Baseball's Eminent Impresario: A One-and-a-Half-Man Show (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781986134262)

This book is unique in both subject matter and format. Bill Veeck, Jr, was probably the most remarkable figure in Major League Baseball history; although he never played a professional game he owned five Major League teams in the course of a lively life time replete with dazzling promotional stunts (like sending a midget up to bat), and innovations spawned by his lively imagination. There is great humor in the Veeck story as well as pathos. Veeck was a chain-smoker who loved books, read all night, slept little, and due to a World War II injury navigated through his world on a peg-leg or crutches. But the intrepid Veeck let nothing stop him, and passionately pursued his goals. despite being derided by his fellow owners as a "Showman," "Hustler," and "Maverick" and "Baseball's Barnam.!" " One of Bill's primary concerns was the integration of the sport. To that end, he tried to buy the Phillies in 1942--he would then import stars from the Negro leagues and play them in Philadelphia in 1943. This scheme failed, but he did succeed in integrating the American League with the addition of Larry Doby and Satchel Paige to the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians in 1948. Veeck tells his story in the first person while impersonating other characters. Also, the "Half-Man in the subtitle (a mute Bat Boy), interacts nonverbally with the audience as he changes placards announcing each of the 10 "Innings" during the show. The Innings are titled "Prologue,", "Born and Raised in a Ballpark, "Milwaukee Takes a Header," "Bill Veeck, Jr., Goes to War," "Bill Veeck Courts the Phillies," "The Tribe is Great in '48," "The Light of My Life," "What They Remember Me for," "Soaking the Stump," and finally, the "10th Inning: Larger than Life," a mystical finish to a marvelous story. The play is "book-ended." Surreal scenes open and close the play, with Veeck emerging from a casket in the "1st INNING" to review his amazing career, then rejecting the casket in the "10th INNING" on the point of death, to provoke a surprise ending. The action may be enhance by appropriate AUDIO, mostly played on a ball park organ, and VIDEO PROJECTIONS, all of which add to the ambiance or setting and the story told within that setting by VEECK as played by a master-actor.

Author: Gordon C. Bennett
ISBN-10: 1986134261
ISBN-13: 9781986134262
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 05/23/2018
Pages: 48
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 11.00h x 8.50w x 0.10d