Audiobook9 hours
Playing With the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams
By Gary Moore
Narrated by Toby Moore
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
In 1940, at just 15 years old, small-town baseball star Gene Moore was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, who saw in him the potential to become one of the great catchers of all time. Before that could happen, though, WWII intervened. Gene's story, a surprising paean to the power and humanity of a game, is told here by his son, a first-time author who exhibits the confidence and pacing of a pro. His gripping material certainly helps: after several years overseas in the Navy's touring baseball team, Gene was brought back to Louisiana and assigned to guard secret German POWs, whose U-boat was captured just days before the storming of Normandy. There, Gene teaches his German captives how to play baseball, with a number of unintended and life-altering consequences. When Gene's finally able to return home to Sesser, Ill., he's "on crutches, depressed and embarrassed," holing up in the local bar and prompting one bartender to lament, "he's become one of us, when we were hoping he would make us like him." Gene's journey from promise to despair and back again, set against a long war and an even longer post-war recovery, retains every bit of its vitality and relevance, a 20th-century epic that demonstrates how, sometimes, letting go of a dream is the only way to discover one's great fortune.
Related to Playing With the Enemy
Related audiobooks
PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man Who Flew The Memphis Belle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters from Lee's Army: Or Memoirs of Life in and Out of the Army in Virgi Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt's How You Play the Game and The Games Do Count Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America's Most Hated Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baseball Memories & Dreams: Reflections on the National Pastime from the Baseball Hall of Fame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Long Time Gone: Neighbors Divided by Civil Way Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Undefeated: America's Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Remember Ben Clayton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hero of the Pacific: The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Outwitting The Hun; My Escape From A German Prison Camp Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Za Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-61: Unabridged Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Escape from Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Task Force Baum Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Were Soldiers Once… and Young: Ia Drang – The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fibber McGee & Molly - Volume 2: Women’s Bazaar & Missing Laundry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Election Heist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Sports Biographies For You
Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tiger Woods Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elevate and Dominate: 21 Ways to Win On and Off the Field Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5QB: My Life Behind the Spiral Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breathe: A Life in Flow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Truth About Aaron: My Journey to Understand My Brother Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Running Man: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Baseball 100 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Tyrus: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way of the Fight Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest You: Face Reality, Release Negativity, and Live Your Purpose Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Darkness to Light: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Total Competition: Lessons in Strategy from Formula One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unguarded Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Run the Mile You're In: Finding God in Every Step Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5LeBron Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sixty-One: Life Lessons from Papa, On and Off the Court Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Never Had It Made Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's Hard for Me to Live with Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Playing With the Enemy
Rating: 4.266666533333333 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
30 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5a strong message here for people to teach out to relatives and to learn of their life. everyone has a story
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very good story
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this book! It is a great book if you are a war buff and baseball fan. It tells the tale of a young man who is a gifted athlete, who is drafted into the major league, then joins the Navy as part of the Navy baseball team, so as not to be drafted into the Army to fight on the war front. He develops some very interesting friendships with Americans and the enemies. The story takes you all the way back home to America at the end of the war and through the rest of his adulthood and baseball career/saga. A wonderful story, that is actually based on a true story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Author is a phenomenal man we spent a day with at my school. This is such a great mix of sports, family and war. Terrific message about what's important in life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Playing With the Enemy is a true story about Gary Moore's father, Warren Eugene "Gene" Moore. Gene was a boy from small-town Illinois who had an amazing talent for baseball. He was an incredible catcher, could hit the ball out of the park, and he was a born leader. As one of the youngest on his baseball team at The Lumberyard, he encouraged and motivated his older teammates to work together.Gene didn't go unnoticed. The Brooklyn Dodgers stood up and took notice before Gene was old enough to play in their professional league. They signed him and put him in a farm team where he could hone his skills until he was old enough to be moved up. However, World War II came along and threw a wrench in THOSE plans.This book is the story of Gene's experiences in baseball, in war, and beyond. He kept these experiences a secret from his children until the day before his unexpected death. Gary retells the story of his father's life as his father told it to him. Probably his very last gift to Gary.Jim Morris writes the Forward to this book and he says, "Playing With the Enemy is a book about many things on many levels, but to me, it is a heartwarming story about what we do with second changes." While I agree with this, for me the book was also about the power of a love. In this case it was a love for baseball. This love has the power to bond, the power to overcome, and the power to scar. Playing With the Enemy is about a LOVE of baseball. And I'm not talking about what you see in the Major Leagues. Unfortunately I think the love is lost there - players/coaches/owners/managers are too in love with themselves and with money to remember the love they had for the game. This is about a true, unadulterated love of the institution of baseball. As Gene says,"...and that's what I love about baseball. When you step onto that field, the size of the man is determined by his heart, not his height."When that love is present, the members of the team DO come together and form a family bond. As with any family, there's often a member that functions like the glue...keeping all the pieces together when times turn rough. Gene was that glue for his teams. I admired that quality above all else in him. Every team needs a Gene Moore. What's more, Sesser, Illinois, needed Gene Moore as well. Gene was growing up at the tail end of the Depression. Sesser was a very poor town and they had very little, but Gene was able to motivated and inspire them as well as his teammates. Playing with the Enemy is a non-fiction work written like a fiction work. I often found myself thinking, "Wow! I don't think a professional fiction writer could have come up with the likes of this man's story." Isn't it amazing how sometimes life can create irony and suspense better than our own imaginations?Gene Moore touched the lives of many. And his inspiration continues to be passed along to others through this book. He has inspired me!