**Listen to my interview with author John Klima. He talks about his love of baseball, and about the magic behind the Milwaukee Braves of the 1950s. You can download the podcast of the interview here, labelled "INTERVIEW - Jul 22 - John Klima."

If you’re not a big baseball fan, read Bushville Wins! and you will be.

John Klima makes the sport sound so beautiful. When Henry Aaron approached home plate on a June afternoon in the ‘50s, “The game slowed down. He saw the world in silence… Front foot down, hands back, weight shifting, quiet and deadly, serene and sudden, stride style. He hit the pitch… and felt the wood give way.”

When I watched a baseball game after reading this book, it seemed like a different sport.

 Bushville Wins! is about a man with the vision and the guts to be a great business man, and a team of players who fought their way to the top.

In 1953, Lou Perrini moved his team, the Braves, from Boston to Milwaukee. Everyone thought he was crazy. But it didn’t take long for him to prove them wrong.

It was the first time a team had been moved west, and to a city with a population of only 600,000 people. And yet, by 1954, attendance at the County Stadium surpassed 2 million.

And by 1957, the team had made it to the World Series to take on the New York Yankees. It had been the decade of the New York baseball dynasty. Between its three teams, New York City had a monopoly on World Series wins.

Beating the Yankees would mean, “A victory for the little guy coming into his own, a celebration of hard work and individualism, of unity and passion.”

And the Braves pulled it off. They were baseball champions. They showed there was baseball outside of New York.

Klima has done an incredible amount of research to put together four years of the sport’s history in Bushville Wins!. He brings out the romance of baseball at the time.

And he argues well why he thinks Perrini and some of the team’s players should be honoured in the Hall of Fame, rather than forgotten.

Now take me out to the ball game!

Contact me: jlewkowicz@astral.com

Follow me: @JustineLewkowic