Playing with the Enemy; A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams

xxi, [3], 299, [9[ pages. Illustrations. Sticker residue on back of DJ. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Signed on title page. Publisher's promotional baseball card like ephemera laid in. Foreword by Jim Morris. Introduction by John C. Skipper. The national book tour was sponsored by Southwest Airlines. Gary Moore is an American speaker, award winning author, business leader and musician. Moore is married to Arlene Moore (for 35 years), with their three children Toby, Tara Beth and Travis. Gary currently lives with his family in his hometown of Bourbonnais, Illinois. Gary has been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, Impromptu Magazine and Southwest Airlines' Spirit Magazine, and was named the 1995 Chamber of Commerce Businessperson of the Year. In 1996, he was awarded the honorable Sam Walton Leadership Award and has appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Driven by word of mouth and the author's heroic efforts to tell the world his father's story, Playing with the Enemy was a surprise hardcover hit for its independent publisher. Gary Moore's book about his father- a baseball phenom whose future in the majors was cut short by World War II and a fateful occurrence during a top secret mission for the U.S. Navy- is a warm-hearted memoir of faded dreams and new hope that is destined for the bestseller lists. Filled with memorable characters from an extraordinary time in our country's history, it is a truly redemptive story that will be read and reread for generations to come.Foreword by baseball legend Jim Morris, former Major League pitcher with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It was true in the 1940s, and it is still true today: if you have talent, someone will notice. In Gene Moore's case, that someone was the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gene Moore was a farm boy living with his family in Sesser, Illinois, a town so small even map makers ignored it. As a teenager, when he wasn't in school or helping his Pop on the farm, slopping the hogs and doing other chores with his older brother Ward and five sisters, Gene was playing baseball with the guys on the town team. Some were twice his age. The older fellows didn't mind having the Moore kid on their team because he could hit the ball farther than anyone else, he was the best catcher anyone had ever seen, he could throw men out from his knees, and not a ball ever got past him. Gene was 15 years old. Word quickly spread across the United States about the country boy who could hit the ball a country mile. The Dodgers wanted to take a look at this farm kid, barely old enough to shave and still awaiting his first kiss, but brash enough to call the pitches from behind the plate and motion to the infielders and outfielders as to how they should position themselves for certain hitters. Headed for baseball stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Gene's destiny was interrupted by Pearl Harbor. After playing ball for the Navy in the Azores and North Africa, Gene and his team were sent to the States for a special-and top secret-mission: guarding German sailors captured from U-505. Unable to field a team, Gene convinced his commander to allow him to teach the enemy how to play baseball while he and his teammates waited for the war to end so they could be called up into the Major Leagues. But Gene's future changed irrevocably in Louisiana.Playing With the Enemy by Gary W. Moore is a book about Gene Moore, the author's father, whose professional baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers was interrupted by World War II. The title comes from the elder Moore's time as a guard in a top-secret prisoner of war camp that was holding the crew of a U-boat 505, a captured German submarine. The book was the winner of the 2006 Military Writer's Society of America Book of the Year. This is also a story about a baseball family--Eugene (Gene) Moore, Sr. (November 9, 1885 - August 31, 1938), nicknamed "Blue Goose", was a left-handed pitcher in Major.…