John Klima is the author of Willie's Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, The Last Negro League World Series, and The Making of a Baseball Legend (Wiley, 2009). His story, Deal of the Century, was selected by When Pride Still Mattered: Lombardi author David Maraniss to appear in the 2007 edition of The Best American Sports Writing. Klima's work has also appeared in The New York Times, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com and The Los Angeles Times. A former national baseball columnist and minor league radio play-by-play announcer, Klima is also a professionally trained baseball scout who studied with legendary scouts, and is a graduate of the Major League Baseball Scout Development Program. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology and spent his boyhood summers sitting in the outfield cheap seats of Milwaukee County Stadium.
