Three up *

The Baseball Reliquary in Monrovia plans to induct three more baseball figures into its distinctly non-traditional Shrine of the Eternals in July. The late Dodgers star Jackie Robinson is already justly celebrated. Longtime USC coach Raoul "Rod" Dedeaux, who had four at-bats with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1935 then went on to coach the Trojans for 45 years, is also quite well known. The top vote-getter isn't. Lester Rodney became in 1936 the first sports editor of the "Daily Worker," house organ of the American Communist Party. He crusaded against the color line and, says the Reliquary, "he would play a pivotal role in the campaign to integrate baseball." Rodney, who lives in Northern California, was the subject of a biography by Irwin Silber, Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports. * And: I'm told that Rodney also worked as a copy editor at the Long Beach Press-Telegram.