Press Box Red For 50 years,
Lester Rodney was a forgotten footnote in perhaps the
most controversial American sports
story of the 20th century:
Jackie Robinson and the
breaking of
baseball's
color barrier. Now, the 93-year-old Rodney is getting his due. In the decade before
Robinson debuted with the
Brooklyn Dodgers, Rodney was the
sports editor of the
Daily Worker, a newspaper (the
FBI files are
here on .pdf) better known as the house
organ of the
American Communist Party. With strident editorials and feature stories about what he dubbed "
The Crime of the Big Leagues," Rodney was an early, often lonely voice in the struggle to end segregation in baseball.
But Rodney's contribution was never acknowledged, because of that "
sickening Red tinge". Many baseball historians were staunchly anti-communist, and didn't want to acknowledge the contributions of the Communist Party. So Rodney's
role (.pdf file) was left out of the official story. With the publication of his
biography, Rodney's place in baseball's epochal story has introduced him to a new generation of admirers. "I wanted that ban to end because it was so unfair; I saw the tragedy of these great black ballplayers, like the
catcher Josh Gibson, who didn't get a chance to play. It's unimaginable today, but look at Barry Bonds: Imagine if he had been born earlier and been unable to play."
(login details for LATimes story in the main link: sparklebottom/sparklebottom)
posted by matteo
on Jul 12, 2004 -
35 comments
I stumbled across a fairly controversial opinion piece concerning
racial integration, but
it's fairly mild compared to some of the writers
other opinions. Never the less, his observations on this subject seem to hold up under scrutiny. With few exceptions, whites and blacks seem to prefer their own company, and as evidenced by
these
pictures, even young urban professionals seem happiest among their own race.
posted by Beholder
on Jan 13, 2003 -
114 comments
