After being shut out of major league baseball for nearly a century, African-Americans formed their own leagues. Any reliable recounting of this history must include examples of the heroes on and off the diamond, the scoundrels who sabotaged efforts to provide talented black athletes with a way to compete for audiences across the nation, and the conditions of pay and daily life endured by all involved in the Negro leagues. The authors meet that challenge by using primary source documents, oral histories, archival visual materials and unflinching details about acts of racism. (Ages 9-16)