It is 1947, the year Jackie Robinson breaks major-league baseball's color barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers--and changes the world. This is the story of that season, as told through the eyes of a difficult, brooding, and wounded man named Joseph Burke. Burke, a veteran of World War II and a survivor of Guadalcanal, is hired by Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to guard Robinson. While Burke shadows Robinson, a man of tremendous strength and character suddenly thrust into the media spotlight, the bodyguard must also face some hard truths of his own, in a world where the wrong associations can prove fatal. A brilliant novel about a very real man, Double Play is a triumph: ingeniously crafted, rich with period detail, and resounding with the themes familiar to Parker's readers--honor, duty, responsibility, and redemption.