Re-shading the history of baseball's color line.

Most fans have long regarded Brooklyn as the birthplace of integrated baseball. It was at Brooklyn's old Ebbets Field, after all, that Jackie Robinson made his historic 1947 debut as the first black player in major league baseball history.

Yet a full decade before the legendary second baseman donned Dodger blue, an unheralded Washington Senators third baseman and part-time outfielder broke through as the first black man on a big league roster. At least that's what many of his contemporaries say in Brad Snyder's new book, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball.

Over the course of research that covered everything from Roberto Estalella's prowess at the plate to the size of his penis, Brad Snyder has shown that the man nicknamed "El Tarzan" was, in fact, the first player to break the color line.

"Bobby Estalella definitely was black," a former Washington Star writer told Snyder, whose impressive new book installs him as perhaps the foremost chronicler of what was then called Negro League baseball.

It's not just this mini-scoop that makes Snyder's book so impressive (Estalella's story apparently is not new to those close to the game), but the detail with which it is told is emblematic of just how thorough and compelling this book is. Despite a few small glitches-Snyder can be redundant, and the book's final chapter is necessarily anticlimactic-Beyond the Shadow is an outstanding book that captures an era and a ball club that helped define it.

Founded in 1910, the Grays took their name from Homestead, PA, an old steel town that was the ball club's first home. By the 20s, the team was a major barnstorming attraction, taking on-and almost always defeating-all-white, semi-pro teams. In the 1926 season, the Grays won 43 straight and lost just six out of 118 games.

Appreciative and enthusiastic black customers came in droves when the Grays played in Washington, and team management responded by scheduling more games until eventually the team was moved to DC.

Yet in spite of their loyal following, the Grays labored in the shadow of the Washington Senators. The Senators represented the American League in the World Series (1924, 1925, 1933) and, Snyder writes, "enjoyed unwavering support from their black fans." The Grays played their home games at Griffith Stadium when the Senators were traveling, but not until the early 40s did the team finally achieve its own identity.

Snyder is methodical and thorough in detailing just how this happened. The team, he writes, played stellar ball, did a better job of connecting with its community after hiring a black p.r. man and drew huge crowds when charismatic pitcher Satchel Paige came to town.

"Satchel," Snyder writes, "saved the Grays. With Joe Louis and most of major league baseball's biggest stars serving their country and the Babe in retirement for the past seven years, the lanky black pitcher emerged during the summer of 1942 as the biggest attraction in sports."

According to the book's bibliography, Snyder began his research and interviews in 1992, and his prose reads like that of someone with full command over his subject. He is at his best when explaining how Grays owner Cumberland Posey opposed integration because he feared that it would ruin his businesses. Posey was right; he lost his star players to the majors and saw his team fade into irrelevancy. White owners who feared integration would ruin the game were wrong, of course; integration, along with night baseball, has made the game what it is today.

The book also offers fine portraits of figures like journalist Sam Lacy, a Hall of Fame sportswriter who pushed and pushed until major league baseball finally accepted a black player. Then there's Buck Leonard, the Grays slugging first baseman, who was too old to play when baseball was integrated.

Snyder closes the book with a call for monuments in Washington to commemorate the lives of Leonard and Lacy. Whether those monuments will ever be built is tough to say. But Snyder's book is a pretty fair remembrance on its own.