Camp Ford
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Boggs, Johnny D. Camp Ford: A Western Story.. 2005. Detroit: Thorndike, 2006.
99-year-old Win McNaughton watches the 1946 World Series. As the St. Louis Cardinals make their way to a classic World Series victory, he writes the story of his own most memorable baseball game. Though he was a veteran of professional baseball in the 1870s and 80s, McNaughton's most crucial game came while a Union prisoner of war at Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, in the spring of 1865. Planned to cover an escape attempt, the game between an integrated team of inmates and one of brutal Confederate guards becomes emblematic for the larger struggles of the war.
Weaving together generic conventions from sport novels and from Westerns, Boggs's novel is strong on research and vivid in narrative drive, with a sudden jolts of violence reminding the reader that not all games belong to the category of play.
Links
- Boggs's Camp Ford web page
- History and archeology of Camp Ford, from UT-Austin
- Camp Ford photo album
- Massachusetts rules baseball, one of two varieties played in Camp Ford
- Wikipedia page on New York rules, the other variety