I'm Vanessa Ivy Rose. I'm a teacher, an author, and the granddaughter of one of the greatest baseball players you've never heard of.

If I'm keeping it real, Jackie Robinson may have broken the color barrier, but he wasn't the first black baseball star, not even close.

My grandpa, Norman Terkey Sterns, was part of what's known as the Negro Leagues, and in an era of segregation, thousands of men like him put their lives at risk, all for the love of the game.

In the new season of reclaimed, I'm sharing the complicated story of black baseball and what it tells us about America's past and future.

I want to play you the trailer for this season called the Forgotten League.

If you find it interesting, click the link in our episode description and follow reclaimed for the rest of the story.

I've got a question for you. Who's the greatest baseball player of all time?

Whether you're a baseball fan or not, you probably have someone in mind, like Babe Ruth.

His name as you are always Babe Ruth.

Hey, Gary.

Baseball legend, hey, Gary.

Shohei Otai.

Superstar Shohei Otai.

These are the greats of America's past time, right?

But what if I told you that names have been purposely excluded from that list?

Players kept out of our record books, out of our halls of fame, and out of our shared memory.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson famously broke the color line.

But before that, there was a whole other chapter of American baseball, a chapter that belongs to thousands of black players who competed in the segregated league.

This is not in the pages of American history books.

And so countless generations of us went through our own formal educations without knowing one of the most significant chapters not in baseball history, but in American history.

In this season of reclaim, we're going to open that chapter and tell the stories of the Negro Leads.

I'm Vanessa Ivy Rose. I'm a baseball fan.

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