Free 100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Jon Weisman Page B

book about Don Newcombe. I want to because apparently no one has yet, and that seems incredible.
    The Dodgers signed him out of the Negro Leagues before his 20 th birthday, making him a teammate of Roy Campanella in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1946. Three years later, Newcombe followed Campy and Jackie Robinson into the majors as the youngest black player of his time.
    And like Robinson, Newk’s impression was immediate. Shutting out Cincinnati in his first major league start, he pitched 244 1/3 innings with an ERA of 3.17 (130 ERA+) for the pennant-winning Dodgers, led the league in strikeouts per nine innings, won the NL Rookie of the Year award, and finished eighth in the voting for NL MVP (Robinson won). The Newcombe book-to-be would talk about him being a sensation.
    The World Series began a run of dramatic late-season appearances for Newcombe. For example, in his first World Series start—the black rookie taking the mound in Game 1, only 2 1/2 years after Robinson broke the color line—he took a scoreless duel into the ninth inning before allowing a homer to Tommy Henrich and losing 1–0. And then, following a solid second year (3.70 ERA, 111 ERA+), he gave up a three-run homer in the 10 th inning of a game the Dodgers needed to win to force a playoff with Philadelphia. His next year he was worked to the bone, pitching often on rest of two days or less, including 16 innings in a doubleheader against those same Phillies. To cap his third year (3.28 ERA, 120 ERA+, NL-high 164 strikeouts), he found redemption with a critical shutout over…what, the Phillies again?… followed by four shutout innings the next day to help get the Dodgers into a playoff with the Giants. And after just two more days of rest, another 8 1/3 innings in the final game of the playoffs, leaving with a two-run ninth-inning lead for Ralph Branca. The book would talk about the relentless heat of these moments.
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    Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe is the only man to win the three major awards in baseball—the Cy Young Award, Most Valuable Player, and Rookie of the Year. Newcombe was also the first African American to start a World Series game, in 1949. Photo courtesy of www.walteromalley.com. All rights reserved.
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    Newcombe didn’t get another chance to pitch in the majors until 1954. In the interim, he was on military duty. The book would talk about his experiences as a black man in the service, and how that affected the rest of his life in and out of baseball.
    After initially struggling during a partial season in ’54, Newcombe fully flowered in the next two years, the ace pitcher of the ’55 World Series champions (233 2/3 innings, 3.20 ERA, 128 ERA+)—not to mention batting .359 in 117 at-bats with seven homers and a steal of home before winning the 1956 MVP and Cy Young Awards with a 3.06 ERA (132 ERA+). The book would talk about his reign as baseball’s most dominant player.
    And then the book would talk about his stumbles. About his battle with alcoholism…
    â€œIn 1956 I was the best pitcher in baseball. Four years later, I was out of the major leagues,” he once said. “It must have been the drinking. When you’re young, you can handle it, but the older you get, the more it bothers you.”
    â€¦And about how, for the second half of his life—his life after baseball—he maintained his sobriety and helped others do the same.
    â€œI’m glad to be anywhere when I think about my life back then,” Newcombe told Ben Platt of MLB.com. “What I have done after my baseball career and being able to help people with their lives and getting their lives back on track and they become human beings again—means more to me than all the things I did in baseball.”
    In my book-to-be, this would be put into context within the world Newcombe lived in, into the 21 st century, and how that world evolved from his childhood and earliest playing