eBay Item of the Day: Behold, Thy Brother

Today’s item is a first edition of a baseball book from 1950, Behold, Thy Brother by Murrell Edmunds.

Tim Morris of the University of Texas at Arlington describes Behold, Thy Brother this way: “A speculative fiction: what if, late in the 1945 season, a struggling major league ball club had signed a black pitcher--and then thrown him into action for the first time in the pennant-deciding game?...A strange fiction: on the one hand it’s an art novella by a highbrow novelist; on the other hand, it’s basically a kids’ story, and is sometimes shelved in the juvenile section of libraries. Reflects the odd situation of “serious” adult baseball fiction around the year 1950; at the time, there were few models for novelists. In its action and theme, it’s a taut, well-written story. Of course by 1950 the speculative aspect of the fiction had somewhat lost its edge . . .”

Morris makes an excellent point -- had the book come out in 1945 or 1946, it would have been much more poignant than it was upon its arrival three years after Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers.

Writing in Philological Quarterly, Michael P. Bibler notes, “...none of Edmunds’s books sold well or has ever been reprinted or anthologized; and his name is virtually nonexistent in the pages of literary history and criticism.”

Still, it would be interesting to read.