Roger Treat

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Roger Lamport Treat (1906–October 6, 1969) was an American sportswriter and novelist who spoke out against segregation in baseball and football and worked to promote integration in American sports. He began his newspaper career as sports editor of the Washington Daily News in 1943 and later wrote for the Chicago American, the Washington Post, the Baltimore News-American, The News-Times, and the Republican-American. His first published piece appeared in Esquire about boxer Wesley Ramey.

Treat helped Jackie Robinson get a 1947 tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers and supported the effort to admit him to the National League. In 1946 he helped start an integrated baseball academy for young men. In 1947 he was dismissed from the Washington Daily News after publishing columns criticizing the Umpires' Association for refusing to referee games with integrated teams, and he continued to speak against segregation in amateur baseball and boxing in Washington, DC.

In 1948 he suggested the Chicago White Sox sign Art Wilson, a Black infielder then with the Birmingham Black Barons. Earlier, in 1944, he wrote a widely reprinted satirical piece condemning the waste of paper by colleges sending out throwaway press releases.

Treat’s lasting achievement was documenting American football history, culminating in The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League (1952). The book aimed to record every game and every player in league history and was praised by critics as monumental. He edited six revised editions before his death; his daughter-in-law Suzanne Treat edited nine more editions from 1970 to 1979.

He also wrote Man o’ War, a biography of the famous racehorse, published in 1950. Other works included a pulp novel, Joy Ride, and a biography of his friend Bernard J. Sheil, Bishop Sheil and the CYO, about Sheil’s work with the Catholic Youth Organization in Chicago. He wrote three children’s books: Walter Johnson, King of the Pitchers (1948), Duke of the Bruins (1950), and Boy Jockey (1953). His final book, The Endless Road, a novel about a Chicago newspaperman dealing with alcoholism, was published after his death; The Guardian called it a heartfelt boost for Alcoholics Anonymous, while Ireland banned it as indecent.

Treat married Eleanor in 1935; they divorced in 1949. He then married Gerda Dahl Treat, an actress and salesperson, and they had two sons, John and Peter. Roger Treat died of lung cancer in Danbury, Connecticut, on October 6, 1969.