In April of 1945, exactly two years before Jackie Robinson  broke the color barrier in major league baseball, liberal

Boston City Councilman Izzy Muchnick persuaded the Red Sox to try out three black players in

return for a favorable vote to allow the team to play on Sundays. The Red Sox got the

councilman’s much-needed vote, but the tryout was a sham; the three players would get no closer

to the major leagues. It was a lost battle in a war that was ultimately won by Robinson in 1947.

This book tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from

communist newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that black newspapers

espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes of blacks throughout the country.

It also reminds us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but

Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual.

And then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball

quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew

About the Author  

Ted Reinstein has been a reporter for “Chronicle,” WCVB-TV/Boston’s

award-winning—and America’s longest-running, locally-produced—

nightly news magazine since 1997. In addition, he has been a contributor

for the station’s political roundtable show and sits on WCVB’s editorial

board. He lives just west of Boston with his wife and two daughters. He is

also the author of New England Notebook (Globe, 2013) and Wicked Pissed

(Globe, 2016)