Description:

In Double Play on the Red Line, debut novelist Rajesh C. Oza delivers a powerful, emotionally resonant story of injustice, alliance, and hope between two American men of color—one Black, one Indian—bound by a brutal encounter in Wrigley Field’s iconic bleachers.

Ernie was poised to become one of the first Black players in the Major Leagues. But on the eve of his historic debut in the 1950s, his life is derailed by a wrongful conviction that steals 16 years from him. When he returns to Wrigley in 1969, it’s not as a player—but as a peanut vendor.

Ratan, a young journalism professor and avid Cubs fan, witnesses a violent assault on Ernie during a game and is galvanized into action. What begins as a moment of horror becomes a journey up and down Chicago’s Red Line discovering multiple truths and venturing deeply into the legacy of racism, silence, and survival in America.

In part through letters—Ernie’s to his long-dead parents, Ratan’s to a wife stranded in India by discriminatory immigration laws—the men share what the justice system has denied: humanity, reckoning, and connection.

The intriguing doppelgängers in this novel give new meaning to the phrase “double play.” A meditation on justice delayed, friendship found, and the fragile promise of racial solidarity, Oza’s prose and probing questions compel readers to ask not just what happened, but why—and what it means for us now.

Timeless in its exploration of social justice—and also timely for this year’s pennant race—Double Play on the Red Line is both a Chicagoan’s love letter to baseball and an immigrant’s unflinching portrait of America’s contradictions. It is a tale of determination, discovery, identity, and the possibility of race amity.

As historical fiction, this novel takes in the history of social injustice in America and India. As autofiction, the setting includes the author's Chicago (Wrigley Field and several stops and neighborhoods along the elevated Red Line); it also features his Evanston (most prominently the Northwestern campus where the legendary professor of South Asian history, Jock McLane, makes a fictionalized cameo as Professor Joc McShane).

Author Bio:

Dr. Rajesh C. Oza has contributed to Living in America and written Globalization, Diaspora, and Work Transformation; Satyalogue // Truthtalk; and P.S., Papa’s Stories.  Over three decades he has written columns and book reviews for India Currents and Khabar.

Double Play on the Red Line is inspired by his daughter’s experience with Northwestern University’s Innocence Project. Dr. Oza is a management consultant, serves on an Advisory Board at Northwestern University, and facilitates the interpersonal dynamics of students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Although he has a doctorate in organization change and graduated from Northwestern with a bachelors in Biomedical Engineering and  a masters in Manufacturing Management, it was Asian Studies at Northwestern that inspired him to a life of reading and writing. Raj and his daughter, Anu, both had the privilege of studying with Jock McLane and wrote a remembrance of their cherished professor of South Asian History.

He can be reached at www.satyalogue.com.

Third World Press "Bio":

Third World Press Foundation, is one of the oldest African-centered book publishers in the world. TWPF has been publishing vital literature under the direction of founder Dr. Haki Madhubuti for more than 50 years. Awarded the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Toni Morrison Achievement Award, TWPF honors Black writers and artists and celebrates artists of all cultures.