Baseball’s Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues

For fans of Hidden Figures and Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated, Andrea Williams’s Baseball’s Leading Lady is the powerful true story of Effa Manley, the first and only woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Black athletes played in the Negro Leagues–on teams coached by Black managers, cheered on by Black fans, and often run by Black owners.

Here is the riveting true story of the woman at the center of the Black baseball world: Effa Manley, co-owner and business manager of the Newark Eagles. Elegant yet gutsy, she cultivated a powerhouse team. Yet just as her Eagles reached their pinnacle, so did calls to integrate baseball, a move that would all but extinguish the Negro Leagues.

On and off the field, Effa hated to lose. She had devoted her life to Black empowerment–but in the battle for Black baseball, was the game rigged against her?