Simulating Satchel: A What-If History of Integrated Major League Baseball in 1934

This book presents a multi-dimensional simulation, a " Utopian Baseball Fantasy," to explore what might have happened had baseball integrated before the 1934 major league season. Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige and nearly 100 of his Negro Leagues contemporaries are freed from the ban of the sport's color line and added to the exclusionary American and National leagues.

The might-have-been history previews in a condensed preseason Sweet & Fleet's yearbook, including commentary, rosters, predictions, and interviews. Pennant races from opening day through the World Series are chronicled in the fictional journalism of The Blackball Watcher as Dizzy Dean, Babe Ruth, and notables from the entertainment world co-star with Paige. The scribes, including fictionalized real-life reporters, examine with the author and season ticket-bearing readers an alternative baseball integration story that opens the way to more deeply consider the issue of racial justice in baseball and beyond.

John Graf is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Negro Leagues Research Committee and has been a local newspaper sportswriter and radio reporter/announcer. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin.