Product Description: Now in paperback—the “first truly comprehensive” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) biography of one of the sporting world’s most inspiring and courageous figures and one of the greatest catchers in baseball history: “Rich and thoroughly enjoyable” (Los Angeles Times)...read more

A detailed history of professional black baseball traces the history of the Negro Leagues, drawing on interviews with former players, and research into surviving financial, legal, and government records to reconstruct the league's institutional history and to explore the impact of the gradual movement toward integration on its survival.

The Hilldale Club of Darby, Pennsylvania (a Philadelphia suburb), was the dominant team in black baseball during the 1920s. Their success came about largely through the efforts of Hilldale president and manager Edward Bolden. Bolden's professionalism and reputation for fair play were instrumental in his forming the Eastern Colored League in 1922. The Hilldale Club and EC League flourished until 1927 when worsening economic conditions caused Bolden to lose control of his team. Traced here are the roots of the club, the development of black professional baseball and the three-tiered relationship between the Negro leagues, white semi-professional teams, and the major leagues.