Most often remembered for his role in the integration of major league baseball, Wendell Smith was one of the most influential and talented sports journalists of his time. While perhaps not as widely read as many of his white counterparts, Smith's work as sports editor and columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, at the time the nation's largest black newspaper, remains important as a historical account of the Negro league and the dissolution of the color barrier in baseball as well as an example of sportswriting that Jules Tygiel characterizes as "among the best of [the] generation." The defining thrust of his journalistic focus was such that accounts of Smith's career are inextricably linked to the events leading up to and including the entry of the black ballplayer into the major leagues. Jim Reisler acknowledges that Smith's career has been characterized by his contemporary Sam Lacy of the Baltimore...