RIP Lester "Red" Rodney

[Theoldmole]

It didn't make SportsCenter, but one of history's most influential sportswriters died this week at the age of 98. His name was Lester Rodney. Lester was one of the first people to write about a young Negro League prospect named Jackie Robinson. He was the last living journalist to cover the famous 1938 fight at Yankee Stadium between "The Brown Bomber" Joe Louis and Hitler favorite, Max Schmeling. He crusaded against baseball's color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn't exist. He edited a political sports page that engaged his audience in how to fight for a more just sports world. His writing, which could describe the beauty of a well-turned double play in one sentence and blast injustice in the next, is still bracing and ahead of its time. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead he was largely erased from the books.

If you have never heard of Lester Rodney, there is a very simple reason why: the newspaper he worked at from 1936-1958 was the Daily Worker, the party press of the U.S. Communist Party. Lester used his paper to launch the first campaign to end the color line in Major League Baseball. I spoke to Lester about this in 2004 and he said to me, "It's amazing. You go back and you read the great newspapers in the thirties, you'll find no editorials saying, 'What's going on here? This is America, land of the free and people with the wrong pigmentation of skin can't play baseball?' Nothing like that. No challenges to the league, to the commissioner, no talking about Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, who were obviously of superstar caliber. So it was this tremendous vacuum waiting."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-zirin/more-than-a-sportswriter_b_401408.html

[Guest Edgy DC]

You can't research a book or story about Jackie Robinson and the end of the color line without taking the communist press seriously as sources. They weren't just the only ones agitating; for much of the story, they were the only ones telling.

Well done, Lester Rodney.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I spoke to Lester about this in 2004 and he said to me, "It's amazing. You go back and you read the great newspapers in the thirties, you'll find no editorials saying, 'What's going on here? This is America, land of the free and people with the wrong pigmentation of skin can't play baseball?' Nothing like that. No challenges to the league, to the commissioner, no talking about Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, who were obviously of superstar caliber. So it was this tremendous vacuum waiting."[/quote:ad58kq89]

That's interesting. I'd love to be able to dig though the old newspapers and read the unwritten editorials that he mentioned, but of course, that's impossible.

Are there any online examples, that you know of, of Lester's 1930s writing on the subject? Those would be interesting to read.

[metirish]

Good link, thanks Oldmole.

RIP Lester Rodney

[Theoldmole]

I have a friend who was sports editor of the Daily World (successor to the Worker) for several years. I'll ask him.

[Guest themetfairy]

RIP Lester Rodney

[metirish]

I've been checking on Google News archives for Rodney articles , there may well be many there but unfortunatly most sites are pay per view.

I did stumble across a Vic Ziegel article from 2005 on Rodney

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/2005/07/24/2005-07-24_the_score__the_honor_of_a_li.html

Keith Olbermann blogged on him

http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/12/lester_rodney_has_died.html

[Guest Number 6]

This was very interesting, thank you.