Andrew Baratta is probably known to most people as either a former Penn basketball player or as a partner in a Huntingdon Valley, Pa.,-based law firm. Yet to himself, Baratta has always been a writer.
Twelve years after graduating, that latter passion has come to the fore in his first novel, What Color Justice. The book is well worth reading, especially for those who are going to have a few hours to spare on an airplane bound for Dallas this weekend.
It doesn't take too long to read, but it required plenty of Baratta's time to write -- four years, to be exact.
The premise of the fictional story is fairly straightforward, though for almost any college basketball fan it is nonetheless the stuff of dreams.
A young black boy living in the projects of North Philadelphia, Darnell Cooper is literally seized from the streets by a wealthy black lawyer, Lionel Cooper. As Lionel raises Darnell, the two discover that Darnell is an incredibly talented basketball player as well as an outstanding student.
When the time comes for Darnell to choose a college to attend, he gets a range of scholarship offers suitable for any Philadelphia high school hoops star. But he surprisingly turns them all down to go to Penn.
Once he arrives on campus, Darnell meets and falls in love with a white girl, Kelly Ryan, who is a Northeast Philadelphia native on the Quakers swimming team.
Kelly's father, John, is a former Philadelphia police officer still recovering from the shock suffered when his wife and son were killed in a car crash on the Schuylkill Expressway.
Once Baratta introduces the characters, he produces the moment when their paths all cross. Kelly invites Darnell to her off-campus house, and they have sex. Darnell goes home later that night having just had the best experience of his life, but wakes up to find out that Kelly is dead and that he has been accused of rape and murder.
In the courtroom, Baratta takes the reader not only into the meat of both arguments but also the emotions of the protagonists. And, perhaps not surprisingly, many of the attorneys and the presiding judge are Penn basketball season ticket holders.
It is here that Baratta's writing is at its finest, not so much because of the plot but because of the detailed portraits he draws of each character's emotions.
"I wanted to write a book where there are no good guys and there are no bad guys but there are people who are motivated by their own selfishness," Baratta said.
Baratta also manages to throw in the names of some of his former teammates at various points in the story. Jerome Allen is a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, and Vince Curran is a gynecologist called to testify in Cooper's trial, while other characters take the last names Moxley and Kegler.
In fact, Allen and Donald Moxley, as well as current Penn assistant Shawn Trice, were part of the inspiration for Cooper's story.
"The idea of a young black kid from an inner city who overcomes tremendous social and circumstantial adversity to accept a challenge to go to an Ivy League school was inspired by just about every one of my black teammates," Baratta said.
"For a guy like Jerome to make the choice of an Ivy League education was an extraordinary thing to me and remains an extraordinary thing to me."
In that context, there is a sort of moral message in What Color Justice.
"Until there is a kid who has the ability to go to the NBA but makes the choice to go to an Ivy because his education is the most important thing -- and your ability to do things in the real world [is] not dependent on your ability to dribble a basketball -- until someone spreads that message to a wide audience, nothing's going to change," Baratta said.
Because the company that published his book is not a traditional power in the industry, the book is hard to find in stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble but can be found easily on websites including Amazon.com.
What Color Justice is worth reading for any Penn basketball fans; the interactions between the characters will make you think about how we perceive others and how the American criminal justice system works.
And you certainly won't be able to help wondering how Penn would do against Texas with Darnell Cooper on the team.
'What Color Justice' - By former Penn player Andrew Baratta - Available from online booksellers
