Gene Moore

He was a baseball prodigy. At the age of fifteen, Gene Moore was a boy, playing like a man, in a game where men, play like boys.

Headed for baseball stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his destiny was interrupted by
Pearl Harbor.
His life... and
maybe our
national
pastime...
would be
forever altered.

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Below is the letter sent via Federal Express from the City Hall of Sesser on Friday, December 1, 2006, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who at this point, has chosen to ignore the challenge.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

One of the top selling baseball books in the nation is The Echoing Green by Joshua Prager. It is a great New York story about the 1951 playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, featuring Bobby Thomson's shot heard round the world! It is a well written story about a famous New York event, written by a seasoned and accomplished Senior Special Writer for the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Prager lives in New York City. It is a well-reviewed story published by Pantheon, a division of Random House, the largest publisher in the world, also located in New York City.

In contrast, Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War and a Field of Broken Dreams by Gary Moore is a uniquely Sesser small-town-America story about a young man few people have heard of. It is Mr. Moore's first book, and its publisher is a small independent press. Playing with the Enemy is the recipient of the 2006 Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Military Writer's Society of America. Although it is a well-written, award-winning, and heartwarming story that touches everyone who reads it, Playing with the Enemy has never received a New York review. It is not connected to any famous event, and so does not have associated with it any particular limelight, as does your own The Echoing Green.

Consider this letter as my open challenge to the Mayor of the most powerful city in the world to let readers decide for themselves.

If Mayor Bloomberg will encourage the New York media to fairly review Playing with the Enemy, our Sesser small town All-American baseball story, I will encourage (and just about guarantee) that The Echoing Green will get a fair and honest review from our local media, including the Southern Illinoisan newspaper, headquartered in Carbondale, Illinois.

I trust that the most powerful mayor in the world is up to this challenge, and will not fear this duel of hometown baseball books.

I will eagerly await your response.

Sincerely and confidently, from one mayor to another,

The Honorable Ned Mitchell
Mayor of Sesser, Illinois
(The Mayor that Roared!)

PS: I have enclosed a map in case you would like to visit my office and discuss this challenge in person.

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You can view the press release at:

http://prweb.com/releases/2006/12/prweb486896.htm