Warrior on the Mound

Narrated by twelve-year-old Cato, this intense and evocative story of racial unrest in prewar North Carolina ends with a dramatic match between white and Black little league teams.

1935. Twelve-year-old Cato wants nothing more than to play baseball, perfect his pitch, and meet Mr. Satchel Paige--the best pitcher in Negro League baseball. But when he and his teammates "trespass" on their town's whites-only baseball field for a practice, the resulting racial outrage burns like a brushfire through the entire community, threatening Cato, his family, and every one of his friends.

There's only one way this can end without violence: It has to be settled on the mound, between the white team and the Black. Winner takes all.

Written in first person with a rich, convincing voice, Warrior on the Mound is about the experience of segregation; about the tinderbox environment of the prewar South; about having a dream; about injustice, and, finally, about dialogue.

Sandra W. Headen, a former teacher and researcher at Chapel Hill, is a full-time writer. Her historical middle-grade novel, WARRIOR ON THE MOUND, was awarded SCBWI's On-the-Verge/Emerging Voices Award for writers from underrepresented groups; in addition, her short story PAPA'S GIFTS (The Carolina Quarterly, March 2019) was awarded the Jones African-American Literary Award by the North Carolina Writers' Network.