I first heard about Bert Trautmann visiting a used bookstore in Branson, Missouri when I was flipping through books in the sports section and came across the then couple year old book Trautmann’s Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend.
The title of the book alone — not to mention the fact that it was in a book shop in a place derided as Las Vegas if Ned Flanders ran it — was enough to grab my full attention. I read through the it in a matter of days, drawn in at first by the soccer and the fact that he finished an FA Cup final with a broken neck, but kept captivated by the remarkable story of forgiveness and reconciliation at the center of Trautmann’s story.