Raised by his mother in the Jim Crow South, Jim Gilliam's passion was baseball. His career was a journey beginning on the sandlots of Nashville to a pro career launched in the Negro Leagues to the first wave of Black players breaking the segregated gates of Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Junior Gilliam never commanded the spotlight, yet he was instrumental in the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers reaching seven World Series, winning four, during his career. He never had a permanent position and was frequently the subject of trade rumors. Remembered as a role player, Gilliam sacrificed his statistics for the good of the team. A company man.
His career as a player and a coach with the Dodger franchise spanned three decades. He often entered spring training without a permanent position in the lineup or as trade bait, but still averaged 140 games played over 14 seasons, including two seasons as a player-coach. Gilliam would have likely surpassed half a century or more with the organization had he not died from complications of a brain hemorrhage at age 49, on the eve of the 1978 World Series, where he was slated to coach first base.
In the first book-length biography of the Dodgers legend, Stephen W. Dittmore tells the story of Gilliam's rise in the baseball world, from rough times in the Negro Leagues to more glamorous times in the majors. Gilliam's story parallels the many changes in Major League Baseball, from segregated rosters to the first Black stars, as told in this deeply researched account of the forgotten Dodger.