Product Description

Part Tuesdays with Morrie, part Field of Dreams—a true American story of World War II and redemption

Driven by word of mouth and the author’s heroic efforts to tell the world his father’s story, Playing with the Enemy was a surprise hardcover hit for its independent publisher. Gary Moore’s book about his father—a baseball phenom whose future in the majors was cut short by World War II and a fateful occurrence during a top secret mission for the U.S. Navy—is a warm-hearted memoir of faded dreams and new hope that is destined for the bestseller lists. Filled with memorable characters from an extraordinary time in our country’s history, it is a truly redemptive story that will be read and reread for generations to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22018 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gene Moore, from tiny Sesser, Illinois, was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers at age 15 in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, the Dodgers arranged for him to be a member of a traveling U.S. Navy baseball team to entertain troops in the European theater. Eventually, the team was assigned stateside to guard a select group of German prisoners in Louisiana. The Germans had been captured when their submarine, the U-505 (now a featured attraction at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry), experienced mechanical problems in the vicinity of Allied warships. The story of the relationship that developed between the prisoners and their guards is a fascinating one. Because the Allies captured key code-breaking information with the sub, the existence of the prisoners was kept secret. Author Moore, son of Gene, also tells the heartbreaking story of how his father tried to recapture his major-league dream after the war but did not succeed. A moving profile of one, nearly unknown member of the Greatest Generation. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"A superlative book. . . . Gary Moore's epic story about his father reminds one of the importance of dreams and self-sacrifice." -- Steve Canter, Major League Baseball Agent

"This is one of the best biographies I have ever read." -- BookReporter.com

Customer Reviews

Here's what you need to know before you buy this book...

The first question is "Who will like this book?"

Those most likely to enjoy this book would be:
1) A child who has affection and appreciation for his/her father;
2) A father who receives this book from his son/daughter/grandchild;
3) A child or grandchild of a World War II veteran;
4) An American veteran;
5) A fan of American military history; or
6) A fan of baseball history.

While others may certainly enjoy this book as well, I pick these 6 groups because the story is a unique tribute to those who belong to one or more of them. If you belong to one of these groups, this story will absorb you from the first chapter until you close the last page.

The second question is "What will I get out of reading this book?"

When you set this book down, you will have appreciation for:
1) The gallant call to duty of "The Greatest Generation";
2) Honest, unapologetic love of a son for his father;
3) Life's unpredictable -- but seemingly purposeful -- curve balls;
4) Every person's ability to create second chances in life; and
5) Some special shared experiences that are uniquely American.

I can't think of a better use of one's time, or a better gift for someone that means something to you. Enjoy it!

Gene Moore knows one thing for certain: he was born to play baseball.
Playing With the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams
Author: Gary W. Moore
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Year: 2006
Reviewer: Neal Stevens, Subsim.com



Mueller sought out the American's hand and gripped it tightly. "We are proud of what you have taught us--all of us are. We are grateful to you and your team."

Everyone likes a success story, the struggle of an underdog to overcome long odds and achieve glory. Just as popular are the stories where one blessed with extraordinary talents reaches his full potential, awing those around him. Gary Moore's Playing With the Enemy is the story of his father, Gene Moore, a story he only discovered by chance. It examines both themes of long odds and talent and reveals there is as much glory in facing adversity as overcoming it. The book combines baseball, U-boats, talent and sacrifice into one well-written tale tinged with bitter irony.

Born and raised in the Depression-era small town of Sesser, Illinois, where coal-mining is on the decline and pig farming is the future, Gene Moore knows one thing for certain: he was born to play baseball. At a mere fifteen Gene is a catcher with major league hitting power and a rocket arm that can throw out runners across the diamond. Behind the plate Gene projects leadership and good sportsmanship. The team and the whole town revere him. His father is a little puzzled by all the attention Gene receives for playing a leisure game and his older brother Ward is quietly jealous. "Everyone referred to Ward as `Gene's older brother' and Ward didn't like it one bit". One day a man drives into town in a new Buick, something not often seen in dusty Sesser. A scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers likes what he sees and pays a call on Gene's parents. Gene's dream is about to become reality.

Within a year he's producing outstanding play in the minors and is named the league's Rookie of the Year...and he's still a boy who has not seen his seventeenth birthday. Then on a warm December day, as he's leaving the theater with friends, the news of Pearl Harbor reaches Sesser. The US is at war. Gene's older brother Ward immediately declares his intent to join the military. Gene is too young to join but compulsory service looms months away. The Dodgers arrange for Gene to play exhibition baseball in the Navy. This will allow Gene to stay well behind the lines, safe and sound and able to keep his baseball skills honed.

It's on the US Navy Touring Baseball Team Gene meets pivotal character Ray Laws, a pitcher with a wicked forkball that few batters can hit and equally few catchers can handle. Gene proves up to the task of catching it, sparking a friendship. The team is shipped off to North Africa to entertain the troops engaged in operations against the Germans. They learn a cruel lesson that "being behind the lines" is not a precise term.

Neither coach had yet reached their respective bench when a faint thumping sound, followed by a whistle, was heard. None of the ballplayers had a clue what it was, but the wounded on the sidelines knew immediately. "Incoming!" screamed one of the soldiers standing along the first base line on a pair of crutches.

Gene's brother serves as a tanker and they enjoy a brief reunion. When the war moves into Sicily and Italy, the Navy baseball team receives an order to return to the States for reassignment. Gene sets off for Norfolk, Virginia while Ward continues the fight against the enemy in Europe.

Far from Gene's world of line drives and fly balls, a US naval task force relentlessly hunts a German U-boat in the Atlantic. There is something worth noting about this hunter-killer group: it is led by Captain Dan Gallery, "a seasoned hunter of German U-boats". Gallery is determined to capture a U-boat and seize the codebooks and Enigma encryption machine. Much of the Allies' success in the Battle of the Atlantic can be traced to codebreaking. With the successful capture of a U-boat and the resulting intelligence harvest, the Allies can route convoys around known wolfpack positions and send other hunter-killer groups after known U-boat positions.

Gallery's task force locates the U-505, a boat with a tainted history of disaster and tragedy. After a ferocious succession of depth charges, U-505 is plunged into darkness accompanied by the unnerving sound of water flooding into the fractured hull.

It was easy to imagine the seawater filling up beneath the deck plates, adding tons of weight that would soon make it impossible to bring the boat to the surface. And the ocean floor was a mile below them.

The crew of U-505, certain their sub is doomed to sink at any second, surface to abandon ship. Gallery sends in a special boarding party to descend into the sub's gloomy interior to secure the flooding and seize the Enigma. U-505 is captured and returned to the States, the "first enemy ship boarded and captured by the US Navy since the War of 1812". In order to preserve the usefulness of the captured codes, the seizure of U-505 and the abduction of the crew must remain secret at any cost.

The U-505 POWs are sent to a remote camp in Louisiana. Not even the Red Cross is notified of their existence. Gene and many of the Navy Baseball team are sent there as guards. The captured Germans view the Americans as the enemy with no reservation; their internment is just another chapter of the life and death struggle of the Reich. Gene doesn't make a very formidable guard. He passes time trying to coax the Germans into small talk. At times I found myself at odds with Gene's jarring Ring Lardner-style optimism and his abundant amity with the German POWs, until I realized that these are textbook American traits. For Gene, there are only thoughts of baseball. Everything around him is either an obstacle or an opportunity toward furthering his career and enjoying the game. And listless guard duty is hardly keeping him fit for the major leagues.

He wheedles the camp commander into letting him setup ball practice with any Germans who will cooperate. It's remarkable that the captured crew of the U-505 were allowed to mix and mingle with the Navy baseball team, to even play exhibition games in front of spectators, in light of the enormous security concerns. The U-505 men are not completely convinced that this "baseball" isn't a new interrogation tactic. Some of the U-505 crew will have nothing to do with the enemy and those who do participate are rude and uncooperative. However, in the end, the spirit of competitive sports won out with "the sound of men laughing and yelling in two languages" mixed with the "crack of a wooden bat giving a hardball a ride through the humid Louisiana morning air".

I've taken you partway into this story, the rest is best discovered first hand. Playing With the Enemy is a multifaceted narrative, a tale where several unlikely plot lines converge with intriguing--and at times, heartrending--results. At its heart, it's a personal drama of a hopeful young man; of two brothers, one with rising fortunes and one who ends up in VA hospital surrounded by men who were maimed in combat. A story of a hard-luck U-boat and its crew; of the common bonds good sportsmanship and optimism can create. Author Gary Moore sets up a brisk pace, advancing through the events of his father's life with regard and care. As a result, Playing With the Enemy is a pure joy to read. It surprises you and then surprises you again while you're still nodding in thought over the previous pages.

Good success stories are about more than luck and raw talent. The best success stories are also about courage, tenacity, and coping with misfortune, where success and victory are not always critical to the final outcome.

A Story You'll Never Forget....
Here is a baseball and World War II story that brings an extraordinary time in our country's history alive, along with the people who made it fascinating. You will laugh and cry, and never forget it. History, after all,is about the people who lived it.

Even though the country had suffered through the Great Depression, and the coal mine just wasn't producing much anymore, the tiny town of Sesser, Illinois did have a town baseball team called the Sesser Egyptians. Gene Moore was a fifteen-year-old farm boy living there and helping out on the family farm. He was also the best catcher anyone had ever seen; he could throw men out from any position, not a ball ever got past him, and he could hit the ball farther than anyone else. Gene had a talent for controlling the game and even the older men followed his lead without question. When you are that good, word gets around, and the Brooklyn Dodgers sent a scout to take a look at Gene.

He had signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers; but when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, he decided to do his duty and join the Navy. He was only seventeen years old. Gene was sent to play ball with a Navy team to entertain the troops in the Azores and North Africa. Then he and the other team members were sent on a special, top-secret mission to guard a group of German submarine sailors from the captured U-505 in Louisiana. Baseball was still the primary thing on Gene's mind, and since there weren't enough guys to make up a game, Gene convinced his commander to allow him to teach the enemy how to play baseball while he and his teammates waited for the war to end. They all hoped to be called up into the Major Leagues. Unfortunately, his destiny took a drastic change during the last game.

While Warren Eugene Moore never did achieve his dream of playing in the Majors, his son just may have catapaulted him into immortality with this passionate biography... a riviting story about a remarkable man. Gene had never talked about his possible career in baseball to his family; but finally, just before his death, he spent many hours talking to his son, Gary Moore, and revealing his unprecedented life story. Through extensive research, and talking to dozens of people who knew his father, Gary was able to flesh out the story and give us this compelling and sometimes heart-wrenching tale.

Playing With the Enemy is undoubtedly the best book I have read this year... I simply could not put it down.