The Negro Baseball League's everlasting mark on America and its pastime

Apr. 5—From the 1920s to the 1960s, baseball was divided.

Jackie Robinson may have broken the color barrier in 1947, but it took a long time before Major League Baseball was a welcome place for anyone to play.

Before the true integration of baseball, anyone who wasn't white played in the Negro Baseball League. It was a league that played its own style of baseball, a style that carries on to this day through many of the African American and Hispanic MLB talent.

There has been a resurgence of popularity for the Negro League. Kids across the nation take the field in Kansas City Monarch hats and New York Black Yankees shirts. The names of black baseball legends like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Turkey Stearnes now ring in the heads of baseball fanatics as they did in the 1930's.

So, why is Negro Leagues Baseball so important? What is it about this section in the history of the most romanticized sport in the world that makes it so transcendent and so culturally significant right now?

Well, as the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President and Georgia native Bob Kendrick put it, "The history of the Negro Leagues is the history of this country, both good and bad".

"As I tell people all the time, this story could have only happened in America," Kendrick said. "So, yes, it is anchored against the ugliness of America's segregation, a horrible chapter in this countries history. But, as I also note, is that out of segregation rose this wonderful story of triumph and conquest."

Kendrick has been at the forefront of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum for over a decade, serving a President since March of 2011. He believes that the museum and its partners like the MLB and the MLB Players Association have been a major player in the resurgence of interest in the Negro Leagues.

"I do think the museum has been at the forefront of it, but I also think Major League Baseball's embracing of Negro League history has also opened it up to a new generation of baseball fans, who are not only learning about the Negro League's, but in many way I think falling in love with the Negro Leagues."

One of the many ways the museum has helped young people learn about the legends of black baseball is through the popular video game MLB The Show. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has a five year partnership with Sony Playstation allowing them to, starting with the 2023 edition of the game, introduce Negro League legends and tell their stories in the game. The games stories are narrated by Kendrick himself.

"It has had a tremendous impact in terms of the interest, awareness and recognition of the Negro League because I'm witnessing people coming to this museum because they saw the museum in the video game," Kendrick said.

It is yet another successful action taken by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to not only educate baseball fans around the world, but to get more of America's African-American youth excited about baseball. For Kendrick, the best way to do that is to show kids baseball heroes and legends that look like them. It's a lot easier to picture yourself as your hero when your hero looks like you.

And it's not just players. Owners, managers and every other role a Negro League baseball team needed were filled by those who were excluded by the MLB. African Americans didn't just play the game of baseball that ran it, inspiring millions of young Black children to chase their dream.

For too long the mantra of "If it didn't happen in Major League Baseball, it didn't happen" stood strong — Excluding the remarkable accomplishments of Negro League players. That changed in 2020.

Though the year was marred by Covid-19, baseball fans will remember 2020 for a different reason. In 2020, the 100 year celebration of the start of the Negro Leagues, the MLB announced that they would be adding the statistics of the Negro League players to the statistical history of Major League Baseball, effectively recognizing the Negro Leagues as a major league.

After seeing the stats kept by the Negro Leagues, many fans have recognized a fact that Kendrick has known for a long time. "As baseball fans we were cheated".

Fans today should be sharing the legend of Satchel Paige and Babe Ruth facing off in their prime, locked in a battle of baseball giants, but we were robbed of it by senseless racism and segregation. Instead, Paige didn't debut in the MLB until seven years after Ruth retired. Paige was 42, the oldest rookie in MLB history and won Rookie of the Year, by the way.

The Negro league also stands as symbol for racial equality.

African Americans may long have been excluded from America's pastime, but they refused to do the same for others. The Negro Leagues were filled with Hispanic players, especially Cubans, to the point that there were many teams with names that pointed to that fact, such as the New York Cubans.

"The Negro League didn't care what color you were. All they cared was can you play? That's it. That's all that mattered. Can you play?, " Kendrick said. "And what I find more interesting is that they refused to treat others the way they were being treated."

Of course, while they refused to engage in it, racism still hung over the heads of the great ballplayers. The Cuban names were not just for the Cubans players. There is a sense of irony there.

Often times, to avoid the racism and bigotry toward African Americans that raged in mid-1900s USA, Black players would feign Cuban accents and intentionally speak in broken English to pass them selves off as Cubans jut to get a meal. That or they would send their hispanic teammates in to get the food for them. That's right. It was more tolerable at the time to not be American at all than to be a Black American.

However, there is even more irony within the game of baseball in the mid-1900s. These players were barred from participating in the sport that they loved and they played anyway. That idea is inherently American. It's what started this great country. "Tax me without representation then I'll declare my independence and run the country my way".

So, while it was the racism of America that tried to stop these brave men from playing baseball, it was the American spirit that encouraged them to push on and play anyway. The Negro Leagues are a perfect example of the American dream.

"What the Negro Leagues teaches us is very simple. In this great country of ours, if you dare to dream and you believe in yourself you can do or be anything you want to be," Kendrick said. "These courageous athletes of the Negro Leagues, they dared to dream of playing baseball. That passion for our game transcended race, it transcended gender and it transcended age and to me that's what makes this story so compelling and so awe inspiring."

The legacy of the Negro leagues carries on today through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, where everyday baseball fans come in droves to relive the legendary past of the Negro Leagues. Folks like Kendrick are determined to share the story of black baseball with the world and show the trail that these brave players blazed.

Everyday more and more African American kids are waking up eager for the feel of the dirt, cleats and a wooden bat in their hands. They watch as players like Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge and Tim Anderson follow in the footsteps of Negro League greats. It was men like Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster and "Smokey" Joe Williams who took the brunt of the racial inequality of the day so that the young African-American ball players of the future wouldn't have to.