Season of Change: Baseball, Coal Mining, and a Small Town’s Struggle to Beat the Odds

A town literally built upon the once booming coal economy, the rise to prominence and eventual decline of West Frankfort, Illinois, tightly parallels that of the coal industry itself. Depicting a town unknowingly on the threshold of the likely end of an era of growth and economic prosperity, Season of Change: Baseball, Coal Mining, and a Small Town’s Struggle to Beat the Odds is an engaging and bittersweet account of the rise and fall of the town of West Frankfort and the West Frankfort Cardinals. An intimate and personal depiction of the 1948 Illinois State League champions and the town they called home also takes a swing at the larger social and economic issues that continue to largely shut out efforts to return to the prosperity and potential of the past.