Baseball’s Leading Lady and the End of America’s Black Baseball Teams

2021 was the first season in history that a Major League Baseball team had a woman in the top job – Kim Ng as the General Manager of the Miami Marlins. Over ninety years ago, another woman of color blazed a similar trail in baseball. Effa Manley owned and co-managed the Newark Eagles – a team of Black baseball players who were prohibited from playing with or against white players for decades. Journalist Andrea Williams has a book about Effa Manley’s contributions to baseball and valiant efforts to keep integration from destroying the “Negro Leagues.” The book is called “Baseball’s Leading Lady.”