All the Dead Heroes

Book excerpt: Crime reporter T.S.W. Sheridan investigates the troubled life—and untimely death—of one of his boyhood idols from the 1960s, baseball legend Frank Wooley. The second black player to play for the New York Yankees, Wooley's outspokenness on civil rights and labor issues -- and a reputation for womanizing and gambling -- had forced him from the game he loved. For twenty years he's lived the life of a recluse on a secluded piece of land tucked away in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region. Now, only weeks before his controversial induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Wooley is savagely murdered and Sheridan is determined to find out why.