With his ability to travel through time by using baseball cards, Joe goes back to 1947 to meet Jackie Robinson, turning into a black boy in the process.
Growing up in rural Alabama in the 1950s, ten-year-old Alice has no one to talk to but Leroy, the black farm hand, but when Alice's doctor father moves the family to Tennessee, she has trouble fitting in and she sorely misses Leroy.
In 1947, a Chinese child comes to Brooklyn where she becomes Americanized at school, in her apartment building, and by her love for baseball.
Teenager Biddy Owens' 1948 journal about working for the Birmingham Black Barons includes the games and the players, racism the team faces from New Orleans to Chicago, and his family's resistance to his becoming a professional baseball player. Includes a historical note about the evolution of the Negro Leagues.
Eleven-year-old Jason, believing the school custodian Mack Henry to be Buck McHenry, a famous pitcher from the old Negro League, tries to enlist him as a coach for his Little League team by revealing his identity to the world.
Eleven-year-old Thomas talks his grandfather into driving all the way across Florida to meet Coco Grimes, an old man who remembers Negro League baseball, but the actual encounter proves to be bittersweet.
In 1953, Leah Hopper dreams of leaving the poverty and segregation of her home in Sulphur, Louisiana, and when Aunt Olivia sends train tickets to Los Angeles as part of her tenth birthday present, Leah gets a first taste of freedom.