While many pundits had undertaken to assemble lists of top stars in baseball, and selected All-Star teams for seasons after they were completed, such endeavors were theoretical. Less so in Negro baseball, where a more free-wheeling concept of contracts and associations led to the possibility of a wealthy entrepreneur assembling a true team of stars if they had the cash to do so, as Gus Greenlee of the Pittsburgh Crawfords did in the 1930s, for example, such things were often impossible in real life. But, in 1933, the seemingly impossible happened. This book tells that story.

In that year of 1933 the city of Chicago was hosting the World's Fair. That city had previously done so in 1893 with the Columbian Exposition, a renowned and successful gathering. Now, forty years later, they were hosting again, but with a worldwide Depression on, there were plenty of worries that such a festival would be a flop. Then an idea was formed to draw people to a big event and to promote the great American game of baseball by gathering the greatest (white) stars of the game for a competition that would be the Game of the Century, the first true All-Star game. There had been plenty of barnstorming tours with many stars playing in the offseason, but this would be a midseason event where the best of the best would play in midseason form.

Arch Ward, sports editor for the Chicago Tribune, cooked up and sold the idea to the necessary parties, undertook to have fans elect the players for the teams, and put on a spectacular show. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, and the other biggest names in the game (not including Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and other Black ballplayers) would take the field in a true classic. And it worked! The game became an annual tradition that continues, and also inspired a Negro League version, the East-West Game. Veteran writer Randall Sullivan tells the story in this book, due to be released June 1, 2026. I have reviewed an advanced uncorrected proof, so I will not comment on misspellings and typographical errors, which will hopefully be corrected in the final released copy.

Sullivan is a twenty-year contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, a writer of articles for many other magazines including Wired and Esquire, and writer of books that have gained him three Pulitzer nominations, including volumes on Michael Jackson and the "Billionaire Boys Club." This book displays the strengths and weaknesses of those other volumes. Sullivan writes extensively and thoroughly, but relies on some questionable sources, publishing some information that can be unreliable. Take what is here not as gospel, but with a grain (or several) of salt.

The book's subtitle is "Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads," and the Babe and the President serve as the main characters. There is much background on the corruption in the Chicago of the era, on the violence of society and the glorification of criminals such as Al Capone and John Dillinger,  and quite a bit on the history of the game of baseball to the time. You or I could take the roughly 425 pages and make a much tighter book of about 250 pages that would read much more smoothly. It can be difficult to so thoroughly edit such star writers, though. I found the book interesting but overlong, and with too many sketchy stories. It is filled with good stories about ballplayers and old Chicago, so it is a good book, but not a classic in my opinion.