Why am I passionate about this?

I have long been fascinated by how Black players and team owners strove to put forward their best efforts in the decades before professional baseball was integrated in the late 1940s. I have been researching and writing about the Negro Leagues for more than 30 years, with three books and several contributions to Black baseball compilations to my credit. I was a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame special committee that elected 17 Black baseball figures to the Hall in 2006. Black baseballā€™s efforts were finally acknowledged in 2020 when Major League Baseball, which once wanted nothing to do with the Negro Leagues (except to sign away their best players starting in 1946), finally acknowledged them as major leagues.


I wrote

Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles

By James Overmyer,

Book cover of Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles

What is my book about?

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, this book honors the life of Effa Manley, the trailblazingā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams

James Overmyer Why did I love this book?

Peterson was a magazine writer in the 1960s who became curious about those Black baseball teams he saw play in the Pennsylvania town where he grew up. He set out with his tape recorder to track down and interview many Negro League figures, and dove into library newspaper collections to find the facts to back up their reminiscences. First published in 1970 and still in print, this is the first comprehensive history of Black professional baseball, the history of which was in serious danger of being lost to modern memory when the Negro Leagues were put out of business in the 1950s following Major League integration. Many of us who write about Black ball read this book first.

By Robert Peterson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Only the Ball Was White as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Early in the 1920s, the New York Giants sent a scout to watch a young Cuban play for Foster's American Giants, a baseball club in the Negro Leagues. During one at-bat this talented slugger lined a ball so hard that the rightfielder was able to play it off the top of the fence and throw Christobel Torrienti out at first base. The scout liked what he saw, but was disappointed in the player's appearance. "He was a light brown," recalled one of Torrienti's teammates,
"and would have gone up to the major leagues, but he had real rough hair." Suchā€¦


Book cover of If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy Satchel Paige

James Overmyer Why did I love this book?

Don Spiveyā€™s book about the great Satchel Paige is a biography the way it should be written. It treats Paige not only as the legendary ballplayer he was, but also as a fascinating person: a disadvantaged youth who learned to pitch in reform school and a daring individualist in a team game who showcased his superior talents by, for example, calling in his outfielders, then striking out the side. Spivey believes Satchelā€™s outrageous record of constantly switching teams in search of better pay was not irresponsible ā€“ he grew up poor and decided as a man he would not live that way again. Spivey makes another assertion that few other Paige biographers have: Satchā€™s easy-going manner hid a man whose bosom was ā€œconstantly burning and smoldering because of racism in America.ā€

By Donald Spivey,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked If You Were Only White as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"If You Were Only White" explores the legacy of one of the most exceptional athletes ever-an entertainer extraordinaire, a daring showman and crowd-pleaser, a wizard with a baseball whose artistry and antics on the mound brought fans out in the thousands to ballparks across the country. Leroy "Satchel" Paige was arguably one of the world's greatest pitchers and a premier star of Negro Leagues Baseball. But in this biography Donald Spivey reveals Paige to have been much more than just a blazing fastball pitcher.

Spivey follows Paige from his birth in Alabama in 1906 to his death in Kansas Cityā€¦


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Book cover of Talland House

Talland House by Maggie Humm,

Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind herā€”a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lilyā€™s portrait of her and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, sheā€™s been a suffragetteā€¦

Book cover of Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

James Overmyer Why did I love this book?

The story of the Negro Leagues is not complete without the telling of the story of where their existence led. Shunned by a segregationist ā€œgentlemenā€™s agreementā€ among white Major League executives, Black players in the first half of the 20th century competed among themselves, producing individual star players, powerhouse teams, and memorable on-field moments. The signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 signaled that the color barrier was finally coming down. Integration today seems so obvious but getting Blacks into the majors was a complex business, fraught with potential pitfalls. Tygielā€™s book is the best single telling of this important American story. 

By Jules Tygiel,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Baseball's Great Experiment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Jules Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson's crossing of baseball's color line. Examining the social and historical context of Robinson's introduction into white organized baseball, both on and off the field, Tygiel also tells the often neglected stories of other African-American players-such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron-who
helped transform our national pastime into an integrated game. Drawing on dozens of interviews with players and front office executives, contemporary newspaper accounts, and personal papers, Tygiel provides the mostā€¦


Book cover of Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player

James Overmyer Why did I love this book?

Charleston is one of the very best to ever play in the Negro Leagues. He entered Black baseball even before the first Negro League was started and played 27 seasons up to World War II. He managed in the Negro Leagues for 15 seasons, his gigs including the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the early 1930s, one of the best professional teams of all time. Beerā€™s award-winning book tells the whole life of this Hall of Famer and straightens out historical misconceptions, for example showing that his reputation for dirty play and a terrible temper is ill-founded (ā€œWhile he was happy to join fights in progress, he did not usually start themā€).

By Jeremy Beer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oscar Charleston as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the SABR Seymour Medal Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year by Spitball Magazine Winner of SABR's Larry Ritter and Robert Peterson Awards Buck O'Neil once described him as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one." Among experts he is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime he became a legend in Cuba and one of Black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today.

In a long career spanning from 1915 to 1954, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, andā€¦


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Book cover of Paper Dolls

Paper Dolls by Robert Tucker,

Paper Dolls is the memoir of a girl who becomes a young woman in a passionate search for an enduring friendship. Deprived of her older sister, Tess Vanderveer, by the neediness of an Irish ghetto girl, Dove Delaney, Gwen also loses the friendship of Millie Dietz, the beautiful daughter ofā€¦

Book cover of Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution

James Overmyer Why did I love this book?

The Negro Leagues, like all organized sports leagues, were showcases for the stars of the game ā€“ Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, and the like. But, like all the other leagues, they were businesses, too. Sports entrepreneurs, most of them African American, invested in all-Black teams that formed a ā€œshadowā€ alternative to Major League Baseball where the players, and most of the owners, too, were not welcome due to segregation. Lanctot, a history professor comfortable with deep and extensive research, chronicles the successes and failures of the Black leagues, which were almost always existing on a financial knifeā€™s edge, until the integration of pro ball in 1946 spelled their death.

By Neil Lanctot,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Negro League Baseball as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story of black professional baseball provides a remarkable perspective on several major themes in modern African American history: the initial black response to segregation, the subsequent struggle to establish successful separate enterprises, and the later movement toward integration. Baseball functioned as a critical component in the separate economy catering to black consumers in the urban centers of the North and South. While most black businesses struggled to survive from year to year, professional baseball teams and leagues operated for decades, representing a major achievement in black enterprise and institution building.
Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of aā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles

By James Overmyer,

Book cover of Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles

What is my book about?

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, this book honors the life of Effa Manley, the trailblazing female co-owner of baseballā€™s Newark Eagles. She was the first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, there was no one like her in the sports world of the 1930s and 1940s. She was a sophisticated woman who owned a baseball team. She never shrank from going head to head with men, who dominated the ranks of sports executives. That her life story remained unchronicled for so long can only be attributed to one thing: her team, the Newark Eagles, belonged to the Negro Leagues.

This important work shines the spotlight on a previously unsung segment of baseball history. Drawing extensively from Eagle team records and Manleyā€™s scrapbook, Queen of the Negro Leagues is the definitive biography of a groundbreaking female sports executive.

Book cover of Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams
Book cover of If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy Satchel Paige
Book cover of Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy

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