* Review: Playing With the Enemy

Or, you could read a review like this (there are four score like this on Amazon), or the starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.

First-time writer wins Rookie Of The Year in my book.
Kevin Sutton (kevinsutton62659@sbcglobal.net), a huge baseball fan, 07/28/2008

I remember sitting in the theater when Field of Dreams came out. A couple minutes into the movie, Kevin Costner is setting up the storyline, deep into a discussion about batting averages and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Out of the blue, one of the two old ladies sitting in front of me groaned, in obvious agony, “oh god, this is a baseball movie?”

The word baseball said with all the welcome of a democrat in a country club. An hour and a half later, as they were walking up the aisle, the old ladies were in tears, talking about what a wonderful movie that was and what a nice boy that Kevin Costner is.

I thought about this when I finished reading Gary Moore’s book, Playing With The Enemy. I read a lot of baseball books. Some good, some dull as a Washington Nationals-Pittsburgh Pirates double header. Playing With The Enemy is just another book about baseball like The Bible is just another book about whales.

Sure, its central action is based around baseball. But the story has as many sides as human nature itself. It’s a nicely told history lesson about America in the 1940s. About growing up in one of those rusted out Midwest towns so small you wonder why they even bother to name it. It’s a compelling human drama about the author’s dad, Gene Moore, a kid with God-given talent for baseball, a can’t-miss teenager whose ticket out has been punched by the Brooklyn Dodgers and was just waiting for the next train out. But that train found a detour called World War II and that kid found humanity in the most inhumane of situations.

Gene Moore wasn’t sent to war to fight. He was sent to entertain. To play baseball for the troops. But after many of his baseball colleagues were re-stationed, they didn’t have enough to field two teams. So Gene gets the wild idea to train the German prisoners of war to play. But in the last game before being sent home, he would hit yet another detour, this one with heartbreaking results. Then Playing With The Enemy becomes a sad story about shattered dreams. Thanks to an unkind twist of fate, Gene Moore’s enemy is no longer the German POWs, it’s Gene Moore himself.

Bitter and disillusioned, he drinks himself into a hole so deep that he almost misses seeing his second chance. A second chance that turns this story, at last, into one of redemption. In the end, though, what I found even more remarkable than the story of Gene Moore’s life is the story behind the story. Gene Moore kept this secret locked up inside of him for so many years. Time might heal most wounds, but heartbreak isn’t one of them.

Almost by accident, Gary Moore was able to crack this safe he knew as his father and discover a buried treasure inside the man. A hero where there used to be just a loving father. Thanks to Gary Moore’s Playing With The Enemy, Gene Moore made the big leagues after all. Just some sixty-odd years after he was drafted. Unlike Field Of Dreams, this is a true story. It just happens to be a baseball story.

Gary Moore’s first book makes him Rookie Of The Year in my book.