The Communist Party seized upon the issue of segregation in baseball because it represented one of the more obvious evidences of discrimination. The Worker's journalists understood that ending discrimination in baseball could make a truly revolutionary change in American society. In addition, baseball, to the CP, represented all that was wrong with American capitalism. As early as 1933, the Worker's Ben Field commented on the injustice of racial segregation in major league baseball, describing a scene at a Brooklyn Dodgers' game at Ebbets Field, where blacks worked at the stadium but none took the field. You spot a few Negro fans.
Negro workers make good athletes.
The big leagues will not admit Negro players. This is something else to chalk up against capitalist-controlled sports. However, the integration of baseball would not become a significant issue in the Worker until the introduction of a daily sports page in 1936. As with virtually all party matters, the decision to focus on baseball's racial problem had its origin in international party politics. In 1935, the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International encouraged the American Communist Party to focus attention on the subject of capitalist sports in order to become more popular in American society.