cover image The Forgotten Players: The Story of Black Baseball in America

The Forgotten Players: The Story of Black Baseball in America

Robert Gardner. Walker & Company, $23 (132pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-8248-9

Although there have been more than a dozen adult books on baseball's Negro Leagues--the all-black aggregations that predated Jackie Robinson's breaking the game's racial barrier in the late '40s--this is among the first for younger readers. Happily, Gardner and Shortelle ( The Future and The Past ) have drawn on those previous works to produce an excellent overview of this relatively unknown aspect of the game and of American racial history. In their introduction, the collaborators promise that theirs will not be a ``book about how many games were won by . . . Satchel Paige,'' but an examination of what it was like to be a black athlete, barred from the spotlight that accompanied a career in so-called organized baseball. They trace the origin of baseball's color barrier in the late 19th century, then profile Rube Foster and Gus Greenlee, the fathers of the two major organized Negro leagues. Most important, they spend as much time examining the daily life of the black players, their constant struggle with racism and their intense pride of accomplishment, as they do events on the playing field. The book is crisply written and solidly researched, a welcome addition to the YA sports shelf. Photographs not seen by PW. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)