Long before Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a Brooklyn Dodger contract in 1945, Lester Rodney, the newly hired and first sports editor of the Communist Daily Worker, launched the campaign that proved decisive in eventually breaking baseball's color line. But in the hostile anti-Communist climate of those years and for many years after, Rodney's story remained largely unknown. It therefore came as a surprise to many when Arnold Rampersad, in his authoritative 1997 biography of Jackie Robinson, wrote: "In the campaign to end Jim Crow in baseball, the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist press, most notably from Lester Rodney." Now Press Box Red tells the story of that remarkable 11-year campaign and of Rodney's unique career covering sports for the Daily Worker until he left the Communist Party in 1958. Press Box Red is packed with first-hand accounts of Rodney's challenges to the high muck-a-mucks of professional and collegiate sports, and contains frank and frequently humorous encounters with owners, managers, and coaches like Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Bill Veeck, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengel, Nat Holman, Clair Bee and numerous athletes including Robinson, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Satchel Paige, Peewee Reese, Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong, and many others. It's a story every fan will love.

Irwin Silber is a self-employed writer who lives in the Bay Area of northern California. He is the author or editor of eight previous books, including Socialism: What Went Wrong and The Vietnam Song Book (with Barbara Dane).

"This lively book is a welcome addition to the saga of 20th-Century American sports and sportswriting, especially in its telling of the little-known tale of Lester Rodney's role in the integration of baseball."—Robert Lipsyte

"Lester Rodney was a Communist. Whether because of that or in spite of that, he was also one of the most independent and courageous sportswriters of his day. Press Box Red is a timely, much-needed reminder of the pivotal role he played in integrating baseball, and, therefore, in the history of this country."—David Margolick

"Anyone interested in the New York sports scene in the era of Joe Louis and Joe DiMaggio is likely to derive much pleasure from these pages."—Choice