During Henry Aaron's 1952 season with the Eau Claire Bears, a Class C minor league team, the future Hall of Famer learned that he was talented enough to play ball professionally and that his skills would earn him acceptance among white middle-class baseball fans.

Jerry Poling's history of that single season is both the story of Aaron's maturation and of a Wisconsin town's love affair with its minor league baseball team.

In 1952, Aaron was an 18-year-old shortstop from Mobile, Alabama, who had never been so far from home and whose only previous experience was on all-black ballteams. He played for the Eau Claire Bears in their heyday, at a time when the 35,000 residents faithfully followed their team of prospects and filled "the lovely stone stadium nestled in tall pine trees on an island in Half Moon Lake."

Poling traces the progress of the 1952 season and places it in context with Aaron's illustrious career and the history of professional baseball in Eau Claire.