Baseball Under Siege: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and a Doctor's Battle to Integrate Spring Training

In 1961, when the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for spring training, neither team had any idea that an African American physician was about to turn its world upside down.

To Major League Baseball, Dr. Ralph Wimbish was just black homeowner able to house the team's African American ball players who were segregated from their white teammates—except on the diamond—during spring training. The laws in Florida, like the rest of the South, were dictated by Jim Crow. Major League Baseball had no plans to upend it. Dr. Wimbish had other ideas.

Drawing on personal interviews, newspaper accounts, archival documents, and memoirs, Adam Henig has written a story that New York Post sports columnist Mike Vacarro and Tampa Bay Times’ Jon Wilson called a “must read!” A book for baseball enthusiasts that goes beyond the game, Under One Roof is an unforgettable tale of a little-known civil rights activist who risked it all to achieve racial justice in his city, in his state, and in America’s favorite pastime.

"A must-read."- Mike Vacarro, New York Post

"There should be a life-size statue of Dr. Ralph Wimbish on the streets of St. Petersburg. Dr. Wimbish was to this city what Dr. Martin Luther King was to the country. Adam Henig's terrific new book, Under One Roof, beautifully tells the whole inspirational story." - Peter Golenbock, author of The Bronx Zoo: The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees and Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers

"This book will need to be on every baseball historian's shelf, but also every civil rights historian's shelf and is a must-read for those who cherish Florida history." - Jon Wilson, Tampa Bay Times and author of The Golden Era in St. Petersburg: Postwar Prosperity in The Sunshine City