SHIRLEY — Just in time for Opening Day of the 2024 baseball season, the community is invited to learn about the lesser-known stories of color barrier breaking players in the early years of Major League Baseball history.
Author and local TV reporter Ted Reinstein will present his latest book “Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier” at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 7, at the Hazen Memorial Library, 3 Keady Way.
Jackie Robinson has been a lifelong hero of Reinstein, however, over the years Reinstein became fascinated with the back story of breaking the color barrier, the unsung heroes who really paved the way for Robinson, but who never really got the credit.
“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,” said Reinstein. “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.
“What really struck me was that they were everyday people,” Reinstein said. “They were drawn from all walks of life, they weren’t famous, they weren’t powerful.”
Baseball fans gearing up for the season are welcome to dive deep into a part of MLB history they may not know much about, get a chance to talk to Reinstein, and purchase a signed copy of his book that this lecture is based on.
Reinstein is best known in New England as a journalist and reporter for “Chronicle,” WCVB-TV/Boston’s award-winning nightly news magazine.
While he appears occasionally in the studio at the anchor desk or delivering an opinion commentary, it is out in the field where viewers are most familiar seeing him.
From every corner of New England, he’s found the offbeat, the unique, the moving, and the just plain memorable, all while telling the enduring colorful stories of the region’s people and places.
His first book, “A New England Notebook: One Reporter, Six States, Uncommon Stories” (Globe Pequot Press/2013) was selected by National Geographic Traveler as a “Best Pick.” He is also the author of “Wicked Pissed: New England’s Most Famous Feuds” (GPP/2015), and co-author, with his wife, Anne-Marie Dorning, of “New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic” (GPP/2017).
Now with his most recent book “Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier” (Lyons Press/2021).
“I want people to see that we often think we know or understand an event in history, when just as often, we don’t,” said Reinstein. “We may miss the broader context of that particular moment in time, and as with breaking the color barrier, we often recall only the ‘hero’ of the moment, but no longer know anything of the people who paved the way for the hero – that, is what I hope folks take away from ‘Before Brooklyn’.”
For more information, or to register for this event, visit shirleylibrary.org or call 978-425-2661. For more information on Ted Reinstein, visit tedreinstein.com.