by Heidi Gómez ·
Friday, February 6, 2026
Author Ted Reinstein. (Courtesy photo)
Ted Reinstein, journalist, author, and familiar face on WCVB’s “Chronicle,” will visit Harvard for the upcoming Warner Free Lecture to discuss and read excerpts from his book “Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier.” The event will be Friday, Feb. 13, at Volunteers Hall in the public library. It starts at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.
Reinstein has long been a fan of baseball great Jackie Robinson, whom most Americans know as the trailblazer who broke through Major League Baseball’s color barrier. However, getting to that point took many decades and involved many people. In his book, Reinstein tells the stories of those he calls the “anonymous people” who put cracks in the wall to allow Robinson eventually to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. These largely unknown individuals played important roles in this baseball tale and in the history of segregation in general.
Being able to tell that fuller history prompted Reinstein to write this book. “We don’t always know as much as we think we do.” Reinstein writes. He did extensive research into this history, with footnotes following each chapter and almost three pages of references at the end of the book. But “Before Brooklyn” does not read like a didactic treatise and sometimes takes on a conversational tone. It is a quick, engaging read that does not require one to be a baseball aficionado or history buff to enjoy.
Reinstein wrote of the Black athletes who played in the decades immediately after the Civil War when baseball served as a balm to help heal the country but who still suffered the indignities and exclusions that the war had tried to address. These included Bud Fowler, the first African American to play in a professional baseball game; Frank Grant, a great pitcher and second baseman from Pittsfield; and Moses Fleetwood Walker, a gifted catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings. One reads about Rube Foster, “Father of Negro Baseball,” who was first a pitcher, then a manager, then the team owner who brought about the establishment of the Negro Leagues.
When asked what stood out the most in his research, Reinstein immediately spoke of the Pullman porters who worked as “servants” on the trains. They ushered passengers to their berths, carried luggage, or refreshed drinks. Indeed, the chapter in “Before Brooklyn” was absorbing in its descriptions of these formerly enslaved men whose employment became a vehicle toward the development of the Black middle class.
What do the Pullman porters have to do with baseball? Enterprising editors of Black newspapers realized the value of these men who traveled from city to city. The porters were paid to surreptitiously bring on bundles of newspapers, then drop them off at designated points along the train route, spreading the news of Black baseball players to smaller communities far away from the big cities where the newspapers originated.
Reinstein wrote extensively about the importance of the press. The Black press was relentless in advocating for African Americans to play in Major League Baseball. The reader learns about Robert Abbott, founder and editor of the Chicago Defender. His parents had been enslaved, and his newspaper brought to light the injustices in baseball, as well as society at large. We hear about Nell Dodson, whose sports column “Lady in the Pressbox” covered Negro League games, while injecting commentary about the racial injustice the players faced. Boston journalist Mabray “Doc” Kountze’s name first appeared in the prologue but weaves in and out of the book to the end. Reinstein wrote, “[T]hese Black journalists were turning Black ballplayers into three-dimensional people who—in their hopes, fears, frustrations, anger—were struggling with the same prejudice and racism that their readers, and every other African American, struggled with.”
There are many other interesting stories, and Reinstein is a skilled storyteller. Lester Rodney was a white, Jewish, communist sportswriter who covered the Negro Leagues when they played in New York. We hear of the bravery of Doris Miller, a mess attendant on the battleship West Virginia whose heroism at Pearl Harbor almost went unrecognized. Reinstein connects stories about the inequities African Americans experienced in World War II with those in Major League Baseball. We hear how Izzy Muchnick, a Jewish Boston City councilor, maneuvered the Red Sox into holding tryouts for three African American ball players at Fenway Park in 1945. Jackie Robinson was one of those players. Six months later, Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Ted Reinstein is a long-standing journalist in television broadcasting. Fourteen years ago, he wrote his first nonfiction book because he saw news broadcasting as “short.” With print, he could delve deeper into a topic. He is currently working on a novel, a murder mystery set in a fictitious Vermont town.