The Second World War was in the bottom of the ninth inning in Germany and Japan, but back at home the bases were loaded with baseball players, many of them new to the big leagues. While the game's stars traded their stockings and gloves for khaki and rifles, America's leaders believed baseball would boost morale at home.

Teams filled out their rosters with retired stars such as Jimmie Foxx and Babe Herman; with players like Pete Gray and Dick Sipek, whose disabilities had kept them out of the majors; and with teenagers like 17-year-olds Putsy Caballero and Tommy Brown. But while the level of major league talent had reached its nadir, war-weary fans packed the ballparks, eagerly following pennant races as intense as any that preceded the war.

Sal Maglie was a feared and hated pitcher perhaps best known for his vicious knockdown pitches that made batters tremble. Yet he was also respected as a ferocious competitor, one who pitched with his arm and his head, one who could be depended upon when his team needed a victory, and one who refused to quit, even when faced with a blacklisting, crippling injuries, and advanced age. Off the field, he was an amiable man. This work chronicles the life and career of the man and the player: his unspectacular minor league career, his 1945 debut with Mel Ott's New York Giants, his blacklisting by organized baseball for playing in Jorge Pasquel's Mexican League, and his rejoining the Giants in 1950 at the age of 33. He thereupon established himself as a bona fide big league pitcher, and went on to have a stellar career in the majors that included stints with the Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals. Game-by-game analyses of Maglie's professional career, intimate portraits of the men Maglie played with and against - Leo Durocher, Dolf Luque, Frank Shellenback, Jackie Robinson, Carl Furillo, Willie Mays, among others - and a look at baseball as it was played in the 1940s and 1950s are features of the book.