People try to bring to light of how baseball was a man's game for men all races; many felt that the sport would remain segregated as long as the club owners were made up of people who opposed integration. In his book he also talks about how African American writers played an effective role in trying to end the segregation in the sport. They could shed light on things that the white Americans tried to keep hushed. An example can be found in this passage from the book, "Baseball could not have maintained the color line as long as it did without the aid and comfort of the country's white mainstream sportswriters, who participated in what black sportswriters Joe Bostic called 'conspiracy of silence'. When (former New York World-Telegram sportswriter Heywood Broun, in a 1933 speech before the NY Baseball Writers Association dinner) confronted the color line, he violated the conspiracy of silence" (Lamb 14).
What black writers considered the conspiracy of silence to be was the fact that white people were well aware that African Americans were familiar with the sport of baseball because they used to play but no one ever spoke of that. The night that speech was give Broun didn't violate the conspiracy by accident he claims to have mentioned that on purpose so that others would look into what he said would help end segregation in baseball. The campaign lasted more than 20 years and in this time African American writers did any and everything they could to make white club owners to open up the American national game to all citizens, even the blacks. They also wrote letters to the club owners giving them reasons why they should allow African Americans to play on their teams, questioned Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of baseball, about why doesn't he insist on desegregating the sport, attempted to get into close meetings to fight their case and they even went as far as taking black players to unscheduled tryouts at the Spring training centers.