Reviews for When the crowd didn't roar : how baseball's strangest game ever gave a broken city hope

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From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

On April 29, 2015, Baltimore was consumed with the fate of a young African American man, Freddie Gray, who received a beating from police officers that resulted in his death. The outraged community took to the streets. Amid the threat of violence, a decision was made to play a Baltimore Orioles-Chicago White Sox game in Camden Yards behind locked gates with no fans in attendance. It was a surreal scene that will never be forgotten by any of the players, coaches, managers, and press in attendance. Cowherd, a veteran Baltimore journalist, knows the city well, and he delivers a fascinating account not only of a baseball game played before an empty stadium, but also of the Freddie Gray case, finding that behind the tragedy were the same forces that plague the impoverished neighborhoods in every major city: joblessness, gangs, drugs, and an overwhelmed educational system. Freddie Gray had been arrested 15 times, mostly for minor drug possession, but he did not deserve the treatment he received from the police even if he had not sustained any injuries. A compassionate, objectively rendered examination of a frightening case of police brutality.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2019 Booklist

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