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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. This book tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball. 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.
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 is also the author of New England Notebook (Globe, 2013) and Wicked Pissed (Globe, 2016).