As many of you may or may not know I am a member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, or the IBWAA, and with that comes certain benefits and such. A fellow IBWAA member, John Rosengren, is an author and his latest book is called The Fight Of Their Lives.
For this giveaway all we need you to do is one of three things to enter. You can either put a comment on this post telling us about the fight of your life, tweeting us the same answer by tweeting and following @GreedyStripes, or emailing us the same answer by sending a line to thegreedypinstripes at gmail. Multiple answers and submissions will be allowed.
Instead of me trying to tell you about the book I'll let John tell you himself:
One Sunday afternoon in August 1965, on a day when baseball’s most storied rivals, the Giants and Dodgers, vied for the pennant, the national pastime reflected the tensions in society and nearly sullied two men forever. Juan Marichal, a Dominican anxious about his family’s safety during the civil war back home, and John Roseboro, a black man living in South Central L.A. shaken by the Watts riots a week earlier, attacked one another in a moment immortalized by an iconic photo: Marichal’s bat poised to strike Roseboro’s head.
The violent moment–uncharacteristic of either man–linked the two forever and haunted both. The Fight of their Lives examines the incident in its context and aftermath, only in this story the two men eventually reconcile and become friends, making theirs an unforgettable tale of forgiveness and redemption.
The book also explores American culture and the racial prejudices against blacks and Latinos both men faced and surmounted. As two of the better ballplayers of their generation, they realized they had more to unite them than keep them apart.
Also here is what Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated had to say about it:
“John Rosengren does a terrific job illuminating the people and times behind one of the ugliest incidents in baseball history. The friendship and forgiveness between Juan Marichal and John Roseboro is a powerful story well told.”
Also Andrew Dawson, Hall of Famer, had a few words to say about the book:
“This is a story about passion and pride. It’s a story about two men who came from very different backgrounds but shared a common bond. It is also a story about forgiveness with a theme that shows it’s never too late to make amends. John Rosengren extraordinarily depicts how two men long since retired taught the world a valuable lesson—that it is okay to forgive.”