Accusations of Pennock's alleged racism have come into question upon the 2016 release of the book "Herb Pennock: Baseball's Faultless Pitcher" written by Keith Craig. The only source of the story about the call to Rickey was from the 1976 book "The Lords of Baseball" by Harold Parrott who claimed to have listened in on the conversation on an extension line, something which didn't exist at the time. Robinson had stated that the call was made by Carpenter and not Pennock. Additionally in his book, Craig mentioned that Pennock and his wife took in a black woman who had fled an abusive husband in the 1930s, lived with their family for the rest of her life and was buried next to him.