When the Crowd Didn't Roar

"Cowherd's book elucidates a chilling collision of race and sport from recent history."—John Swansburg, New York Times Book Review

“Kevin Cowherd has written a remarkable sports book that isn’t actually about sports. Instead, it is a reflection on a single professional contest played in silence—a historical anomaly in which an American city, challenged by both legitimate protest and grievous violence that followed the unnecessary death of a man, took a deep breath and played a baseball game in a locked stadium, without fans. And in that empty space, everyone—from the teams’ owners, to the players, to the politicians, journalists, fans, and ordinary citizens—had to contemplate the hopes and fears and the failures and strengths of their city.”—David Simon, creator and executive producer of the HBO series The Wire

"A compassionate, objectively rendered examination of a frightening case of police brutality."—Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

"This book should be read under the knowledge that while it is about an unusual baseball game, it is more than just a baseball book.  The reader will have a much better understanding of what the city of Baltimore was enduring during that week and how this game both gave the city a small amount of normalcy during a trying time and was a illustration of how grim the situation seemed at that time."—Guy Who Reviews Sports Books

“Dad always used to say, if you hang around baseball long enough, you will always see something new. That was definitely the case when I watched this ball game in an empty Camden Yards. Kevin Cowherd has done an outstanding job capturing the uniqueness of this very odd day in baseball history and all that surrounded it.”—Cal Ripken Jr., Hall of Famer and former Baltimore Oriole