Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports Review

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Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports ReviewIrwin Silber's biography of Lester Rodney is an excellent book about sports, particularly baseball. And though I'm hardly a baseball fan, the style and subject are snappy and engaging. More importantly, Press Box Red explains the activist campaign mounted to desegregate baseball and the far-reaching affects of breaking the color line in "America's pastime". Rodney's anecdotal story-telling and vignettes of great ballplayers--Black and white--reads more like a sports column than a history book. This is also a wonderful insight into a little explored dynamic of Communist Party, though a bit more background on the Party could have been provided for the reader unfamiliar.Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports OverviewLong before Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a Brooklyn Dodger contract in 1945, Lester Rodney, the newly hired and first sports editor of the "Communist Daily Worker", launched the campaign that proved decisive in eventually breaking baseball's color line. But in the hostile anti-Communist climate of those years and for many years after, Rodney's story remained largely unknown. It therefore came as a surprise to many when Arnold Rampersad, in his authoritative 1997 biography of Jackie Robinson, wrote: "In the campaign to end Jim Crow in baseball, the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist press, most notably from Lester Rodney". Now "Press Box Red" tells the story of that remarkable 11-year campaign and of Rodney's unique career covering sports for the "Daily Worker" until he left the Communist Party in 1958."Press Box Red" is packed with first-hand accounts of Rodney's challenges to the high muck-a-mucks of professional and collegiate sports, and contains frank and frequently humorous encounters with owners, managers, and coaches like Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Bill Veeck, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengel, Nat Holman, Clair Bee and numerous athletes including Robinson, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Satchel Paige, Peewee Reese, Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong, and many others. It's a story every fan will love. Author note: Irwin Silber is a self-employed writer who lives in the Bay Area of northern California. He is the author or editor of eight previous books, including "Socialism: What Went Wrong" and "The Vietnam Song Book" (with Barbara Dane).

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