Season of shattered dreams Postwar baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a tragic bus crash that changed everything

This is an engaging and informative book for baseball fans, but it is not an essential item in an academic library. Vickrey is a baseball writer associated with the Society for American Baseball Research, and the author of an earlier account of the 1982 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Season of Shattered Dreams is a somewhat misleading title, as Vickrey examines much more than a single season of baseball. Also, contrary to the subtitle, the tragic bus crash on June 24, 1946, which killed nine players and scarred the future lives of most of the survivors, cannot be said to have "changed everything," whether for baseball in general or the Spokane Indians specifically. Nevertheless, Vickrey presents an illuminating discussion of the World War II experiences of many of the players and of the economic and demographic contexts of baseball in the postwar period. He effectively relates this examination to the biographies and playing careers of the Spokane players. His focus on three particular players with very diverse, though all ominous, relationships to "the deadliest tragedy in the history of baseball" is especially helpful in revealing the multiple ways that history and biography interplay with one another. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. --Bahram Tavakolian, emeritus, Denison University