am writing from Missouri this week, as I was invited by the St. Louis Jewish Community Center to present in their St. Louis Jewish Book Festival and Speaker Series. The morning after my talk (on storytelling and faith), I decided to attend the J.C.C.’s “Books and Bagels” brunch series, which featured Dr. Gerald Early, whose work I’d last seen in Ken Burn’s documentary “Baseball.”

Early was there to promote his new book, written in collaboration with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., titled “Play Harder: The Triumph of Black Baseball in America.”

As I added some schmear to my everything bagel, I listened to Early’s comments on the Negro Leagues and felt some pride when he named Pittsburgh as an epicenter of Black baseball, after Chicago and Philadelphia.

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