‘A Dynasty Interrupted’ revisits the Atlanta Braves’ decade-long slump

To that point, Patrick Montgomery’s new book “A Dynasty Interrupted: The Rise and Fall of the 1980s Atlanta Braves” (Bloomsbury, $34) revisits an era when the Braves were poised for greatness but fell woefully short. Filled with statistics to back up his claims, as well as interviews with key players Dale Murphy, Bob Horner and Joe Torre, Montgomery analyzes what contributed to the team’s decade-long slump after making it to the playoffs in 1982.

With budding superstars Murphy and Horner on the team and future National Baseball Hall of Famer Torre as manager, the future looked bright. But the front office, led by owner Ted Turner, was impatient for a World Series win, and Torre was fired in 1984. It took seven bumpy years before the Braves finally made it to the Series in 1991, and they didn’t win one until 1995. Meanwhile, Torre would go on to lead the New York Yankees to four championship wins, including in 1999 when they shut out the Braves 4-0.

The biggest tragedy of the era, Montgomery suggests, is Murphy’s failure to make it into the Hall of Fame despite stellar stats and a squeaky-clean reputation in an era of bad behavior among some of the team’s players.

Credit: Mariner

Credit: Mariner

Howard Bryant’s “Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America” (Mariner, $32) examines a dark time in American history when two of the most accomplished Black men of that era were pitted against each other by a political machine in turmoil over racial integration and the Cold War-era rush to erase Communism.

In 1947, Robinson became the first Black man to break the MLB’s color barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. He ended the season as Rookie of the Year. At the time, he was arguably the most famous Black man in the country and a hero to many.

Two years later, based upon the belief that separating socialist philosophies from the nascent Civil Rights Movement was necessary to protect its mission, Robinson was pressured by Dodgers co-owner and manager Branch Rickey to speak before the House Un-American Activities Committee against Paul Robeson. The celebrated singer and actor famous for his stage and film roles in “Othello” and “Show Boat” was a left-leaning political activist who claimed African Americans would not defend the United States in a war with the Soviet Union. Robinson deemed that assertion “silly.”

As a result, Robeson’s U.S. passport was revoked, and he was blacklisted from the entertainment industry, rendering him only marginally employable for the remainder of his career. Robinson would later express regret over his actions, and both men would express disappointment with the country’s lack of advancement toward racial equality at the end of their lives, says Bryant.

Credit: Astra House

Credit: Astra House

Occupy Wall Street veteran and social critic A.M. Gittlitz pens an ambitious love letter to the New York Mets with “Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team” (Astra House, $30). Deeply researched and enthusiastic in tone, it examines the history of the franchise through the lens of class, race and politics, arriving at the conclusion that the Mets is the definitive “people’s team.”

“Gittlitz delivers a wide-ranging history of New York baseball’s ‘working-class-coded’ underdogs, whose outsize role in the civil rights, anti-war and labor movements might dwarf its checkered performance on the field,” writes The New York Times.

Suzanne Van Atten is a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.