His real name is William Ulysses Owens, but everyone calls him Biddy. Like most boys his age, he loves baseball and wants to become a big league player. In the summer of 1948, Biddy is a bat boy for the Birmingham Black Barons, but he's hoping to become a player for them someday.

This summer has seen a pivotal event in the history of racial segregation in America. People around Birmingham, and other towns as well, are excited that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and was hired to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers --- an all white team. Others are worried about what this will do to the Negro Leagues. They're afraid that their best players will move to the white teams like Jackie, and the Negro teams will cease to exist. Biddy fills his journal with the events of that summer, and we watch a piece of history unfold that will impact everyone's lives in decades to come.

Did you even know that the Negro Leagues had existed? Or that some of the best players in the game of baseball were members of these teams? Learn about the history of the Negro Leagues and what life was like in Birmingham, Alabama in the late 1940s in THE JOURNAL OF BIDDY OWENS.