 Hello, everybody. I'm Rocco Constantino. Joining me is Wayne Franklin, former Major League Baseball pitcher and we are here today with the U.S. National Archives to talk about topics related to my latest book, Beyond Baseball's Color Barrier. Thank you, Wayne, for joining us. Thank you to the National Archives for having us. We have a lot of important stuff to discuss today, so let's jump right in. First, we're going to do a little bit of an introduction to ourselves here, so you know who's talking with you. I'm Rocco Constantino. I've been a baseball writer for about 20 years, currently right for the baseball website, ball9.com. We cover baseball history and we give a platform for former Major Leagues and people around the game to share their stories. So we work with probably close to four to five hundred former Major Leagues already and baseball people. If you love baseball history and stories from the baseball diamonds right from the players themselves, you can visit us at ball9.com. My full-time job, I'm a director of athletics at Middlesex College in New Jersey. Wayne, do you want to give a few words on your background there? Sure. Hi. I'd like to thank everybody, whoever's tuning in and to the United States Archives and especially Rocco Constantino for writing this great book and adding some awareness to the importance of blacks in baseball over the course of the history and a little bit about myself. Well, I was drafted in 36 rounds in 1996 and by the LA Dodgers, so I think, you know, being around the Jackie Robinson aura with the Dodgers really was special to me, so which is another reason I appreciate being on here with Rocco. So I played seven years in the big leagues for five different teams, the Astros, the Brewers, Giants, Yankees, Braves, and I played for seven years and now I am a college baseball coach. Yes, I teach young men, but I'm very proud of them and the work they put in and I'm married and my wife and I have five boys, believe it or not. That's awesome, Wayne. Thanks so much. Just a couple words of thanks before we get started here. First, I wanted to thank the great Louis Tion who wrote the forward for my book. One of the reasons I asked Mr. Tion to write the forward was because his dad pictured there as the lefty in black and white on the left. His dad was an awesome pitcher himself. He had the talent to be in major leagues, but he pitched during the segregation years, so his career ended in 1947 when Jackie Robinson was just getting started, so Louis's father never got to pitch in the majors and Louis wrote about that in the forward and kind of the effect that that had on him in his career. So what an honor to have Louis Tion write that forward. And just as a personal aside, Louis Tion belongs in the Hall of Fame for a number of reasons, including his on-field stuff and off-field. So that's my soapbox there. Let's get Louis in the Hall of Fame. He's up in a couple years, but thank you, Louis, for writing the forward. And also another incredible honor I had was having the photos of Leslie Jones in my book. Leslie Jones is a Boston Globe photographer in the early part of the 20th century, so he photographed the Red Sox and the Boston Braves, American and National League, pretty much photographed the entire white era of major league baseball and spilled over into those first few years of integration. So again, thank you to Bob Cullum and Leslie's family. Just again, an incredible honor to be able to include those historic photos in my book. Again, it started here. Wayne, I'm going to start with a question for you. I have a timeline up here. We'll talk about a couple of things on it in a minute, but just in general, kind of playing the groundwork for the whole presentation. What do you think of what I asked you about the impact African-Americans have had in the history of major league baseball? Well, I think it's been more than profound. If you look, beginning with, even if you just start with Jackie Robinson and move on from there, we've seen nothing but great players throughout the years, great athletes. I think without African-Americans and baseball, I don't think our game becomes as global as it is. It's very special, and it also allowed me to play in the winter for five different years. I played in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, and it really opened my eyes to the different cultures and how they approach baseball and the extra personality they add to the game with the different cultures and races, and it's very special. I'm so grateful for it, and I'm grateful that I played in the integration age. Yeah, that's a great point, the personality that they've added to the game, and as we kind of go through the timeline of major league baseball history, once we get to the 70s, we kind of get into that a little bit, and I think that's great. I think of that too, and like you said, the great Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ricky Henderson, Tony Gwinn, all the way straight through, I think of that. I also think of the people we missed out on, what would Josh Gibson have done in the major leagues, or Cool Papa Bell, Martin Dago, Mule Suttles, all these guys that for 50 years, we missed out on what their accomplishments would have been. Fantastic accomplishments in the Negro leagues, but it would have been interesting to see what they did in the majors and what major leaguers did against them. So I have this timeline up, and I don't want to go through the whole thing, but just a couple of interesting points on this timeline I wanted to cover before we move forward. First is the very first guy in the upper left corner, who as I found to be a really, really interesting story, is William White. William White played one game for the Providence Grays on June 21st, 1879. Their first baseman was injured, Joe Start couldn't play. What Providence did at the time was they reached over to Brown University and asked William White, hey, we need a first baseman. So he came, he played one game, it actually did great, you know, there's coverage in the newspaper about it. And then that's it, it was done, one game. 125 years later in 2004, Sabre Researcher named Peter Morris found out that William White's mother was mixed race. His father was white, his mother was half black, half white. So at the time in 1879, William White would have had to, you know, abide by the Jim Crow laws, he would have been considered black. He wouldn't have been able to do what he did. So legally, you know, you could point to William White as being the first African American player in Major League Baseball, or at least the first one who had that type of lineage. But on the other hand, socially, I found that you couldn't really do that because William White was light skinned and lived his life as a white man. He claimed he was white on the census. He did not follow the Jim Crow laws that he was supposed to. So just a very interesting case and kind of sets the tone for how blurry that whole line is once you start talking about that stuff. Another couple of people I wanted to talk about there was Moses Fleetwood Walker and Cap Anson, and their little running history there for a couple of years and the impact that that had on drawing the color line. Moses Fleetwood Walker played in 1883 for the Toledo Blue Stockings who were a minor league team. Cap Anson was one of the early greats of the game, played for the Chicago White Stockings, known racist, outward racist. They were supposed to scrimmage each other. Cap Anson got to the field and refused to play if Fleetwood Walker was going to play, he wouldn't play against a team with a black man on it. Funny thing was, was he was injured, he wasn't going to play. He was a bare-handed catcher, he had a sore hand. His manager, Charlie Morton, was going to arrest him, but when Anson started making a big deal, Morton put Fleetwood Walker out in the outfield and said, go play out there. We're not backing down to him. Anson refused to play. They told him he wasn't going to get paid unless they did play the game, which once money talks, Cap Anson played the game and so did Fleetwood Walker. Fast forward to the next year, Toledo jumps up to the major leagues. So right now they're a major league franchise and they had to play against Cap Anson's team again. Again, Cap Anson now has some advance warning. He says he's not going to play all this kind of stuff. They were supposed to have an African-American pitcher that game too. Charlie Morton was still the manager, but what happened was when the game time came, Fleetwood Walker was injured, possibly legitimately. He hadn't played the games before, didn't play the games after, but the starting pitcher for that day, he said he came down with a sickness and wasn't able to make his start. So you can assume that there was pressure for major league baseball at that time. Cap Anson was a powerful figure, one of the stars of the game, so his influence is there. And that kind of started the rift there of African-Americans in major league baseball and the pushback that you saw there. Last part of this timeline before we start to move on a little bit is the international league there. In 1887, the international league was the highest level of minor league baseball at the time, and it was an integrated league in 1887. Four teams had black players, six teams didn't, and African-Americans were starting to increase in participation. What happened was the owner stepped in and put to a vote. They were going to vote on whether they would be able to issue future contracts to African-Americans, and the vote went six to four against them. So the six teams who were all white voted to ban future contracts. The four teams that were integrated wanted to keep it the way it was, and the international league drew that color line. After that, but also that didn't go on the record. The vote was held, it was publicized, didn't go in the league minutes. Word got around to the other leagues, including major league baseball, and eventually that understanding came to pass where no future contracts for African-American players were in place. So moving on, once that line was drawn, there were efforts to get around that line, efforts to erode it. The line was put in place with the idea of making baseball professional baseball whites only. If people of color wanted their own baseball leagues, they could start their own. But what happened was people started kind of getting around it, and the first new group of people that were allowed to participate in major league baseball were Native Americans. So teams started trying to pass people off as Native Americans if they had dark skin. And the first to do so was Jimmy Claxton. He pitched for the Oakland Oaks in 1916. He pitched two games, didn't do so well, then was released after the fact. But he is on record, they said he was a Native American. He claims that they found out he was black and they cut him. And just an interesting fact was that while he was there, that short time happened to coincide with when Helmar Cigars was making their baseball cards. So Jimmy Claxton is in history as the first African-American to be featured on a baseball card. So I just thought his story was pretty interesting and him being the first there kind of setting a trend. Another real interesting story I came about in the book was Charlie Grant and his relationship with John McGraw, the Hall of Fame manager. Charlie Grant was an African-American barnstormer with light skin and straight hair. He was a fantastic baseball player who barnstormed basically out of Chicago. John McGraw, this is going back to 1901. John McGraw had the idea to pass Charlie Grant off as somebody named Charlie Tacahoma, the great Native American ball player. And what I found interesting was they did not try to hide this. This was not under the radar. It was in all the newspapers from about March 10th to March 29th. John McGraw was out there bragging that he found the next great baseball superstar and it's a Native American named Charlie Tacahoma. The thing of it was that he was so good on the barnstorming circuit that Major Leaguers knew who he was. Roger Brezhneham was on the Orioles at the time and he knew who Charlie Grant was. And Charlie Kamisky was the owner of the White Sox. We can assume that Charlie Kamisky was the one who kind of put the kibosh on this. So what happened was McGraw kept insisting that Charlie Tacahoma was going to be in the opening day in field for the Orioles. Kamisky was known to go to barnstorming games, very well versed in the barnstorming leagues. So he had to know who Charlie Grant was. Anyway, he gets to opening day, the Orioles don't sign Tacahoma. He's not in the lineup. He doesn't play. Fast forward to, you know, rumor has it that Lee kind of got to McGraw and told him not to do it. Fast forward to May and John McGraw was a hothead. He always bent the rules, troublemaker. He got thrown out of the game. He was a player manager for the Orioles. He got ejected on the game in May. One of his players a few innings later got ejected. McGraw came back and started arguing. Anyway, John McGraw got suspended and what his plan was going to do in May was he called back Charlie Grant and this time didn't say he's Charlie Tacahoma. Kind of put it all to one person. He said, Charlie Grant, Charlie Tacahoma, he's coming to take my place during my suspension and he's going to play the five games where I didn't. Again, it didn't happen. We're assuming the league stepped in. But just an interesting story and I was very interested in how John McGraw tried to get around that color line in doing so. And that kind of brings me to a question I had for you, Wayne. You mentioned the different franchises you played for and everything. Did you play for any managers that you would have seen try to do something like this, try to get around a color line or try to pass somebody off this way? Well, I can't point fingers, but I don't know what they would think. I would assume, yes, I played for several very competitive teams. If not, we won divisions. So, yes, I think they would, especially knowing that segregation wasn't exactly a role. As you say, it was in your book. It's a genuine agreement. And knowing that it's not a role necessarily, what's to stop them? And I think that's one of those cases where the morality of it kind of outweighs the quote unquote rules. And sure, I would try it. I admit it. I would try it myself. So, yes, I do. I do believe they would. Nice. And another piece of this aspect in eroding the color line is Cuban baseball. And again, that ties into Louis T and Louis Sr., great Cuban players. A few Cuban players I wanted to talk about at first here. First is a fellow by the name of Luis Padrone. He was good. He was given a tryout by the White Sox in 1909. He had a little bit darker skin. Ended up not making the White Sox, but that was kind of one of the first attempts to bring a Cuban baseball player into the major leagues. What was interesting at the time was the way the rules of segregation and the way they had to be followed in Cuba as compared to the United States. So in Cuba, for the most part, you either had African ancestry or Spanish ancestry. So there were the Afro Cubans and the Spanish Cubans. Spanish Cubans were able to play freely. They could play in whatever leagues, whatever teams they wanted. The Afro Cubans were not allowed to play amateur, but they were allowed to play professional in Cuba. So those were the rules there. America at the time was more of a spectrum of skin color. If you had any African ancestry, Afro Cubans, you were not allowed to play. If you were Spanish Cuban with light skin, you were allowed to play. Spanish Cuban with dark skin, you were not allowed to play. That's in America. So Rafael Almeida and Armando Marzans were the first two Cubans to play in American baseball. They played for the Reds starting in 1911. Almeida played for a few seasons. But Armando Marzans, he stuck around for a good eight years. He played a couple of years for the Yankees just before Babe Ruth. And there were a couple of guys that kind of are pointed to as, again, eroding that idea that baseball was only white. So they debuted in 1911. So from 1911 to 1930, 18 Cubans were able to play in major league baseball. And during the same time, 31 Native Americans. And if you remember too, the player base was much smaller at the time. There were only 16 teams. So having 50 non-white players over that time period was pretty significant. Still no African Americans, but that idea of whites only was kind of being eroded. And that kind of brings me to my next question I had for you, Wayne. Cuban baseball, we mentioned it a few times. Incredible, incredible history. Their professional league stayed back to the mid 1800s. By the time you played, Cubans were prominent in major league baseball. Did you play with or against any Cuban American or Cubans that stood out to you in the majors? Yeah, I played with two. And there were two that I watched. I was pretty impressed and had a lot of respect for them. Those two were brothers that was Levon and Orlando Hernandez, Elduke, is what he was known as. Both of them were post-season heroes. You know, Levon for the Marlins in 97. Elduke was a big game pitcher for the Yankees during that, the last 90s they had in the late 90s. And very special guys. And Elduke was probably my favorite guy to watch in the playoffs at that point. He was like a wizard out there. He was just incredible. Then there was Jose Contreras. So I played with briefly in New York and Brian Pena, a catcher I played with in Atlanta. And Brian, the one thing I remember about him was that he always had the biggest smile. And I used to tell him all the time, I said, you had so much spice to a baseball game, man. And he just smiled the whole time. And he said, that's right. He said, that's what I want to do. And I loved him for that. And he was a great catcher. So yeah, those four really stood out for me. Thanks. That's great. Those are all awesome guys. And as a Mets fan, I know Elduke had a lot of his success with the Yankees, but he had that time with the Mets too. And he was so much fun to watch pitch. Those guys bring so much creativity to when they play and just awesome to see. And like you said, the post-season heroes, man, nobody was as good in the post-season as Luis and Elduke are very few were. Right. And now this was another very interesting part of my research that I came across, fellow by the name of Wendell Smith. Wendell Smith was an African-American sports writer for the Pittsburgh Courier and a number of outlets after that. Paul, a fame writer, he was a spank award winner. And he was an advocate for integration for a long time. He started in 1937 at the Courier. And he was actually the person who recommended Jackie Robinson to Branch Recky with the Dodgers. So very important figure in baseball history. And what I came across in going through newspaper archives was the Pittsburgh Courier survey. So what he did in 1939 was he went around to every national league team, all eight of them, asked all the managers and all the players, or as many players as you could, ended up surveying 40 players about their opinions of integrating major league baseball. Now, this is eight years before Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers. And what I found interesting was to it was unanimous. Every player that he talked to was perfectly fine with integration. They wanted black players, they respected the black players, they had no issue with them being on the teams. And again, he interviewed, you know, Hall of Famers and legends, Honus Wagner, Bill McKekney, Gabby Hartnett. These were people who played when the color line was drawn, when racism was kind of at its peak in major league baseball. And you have somebody like Honus Wagner, some of these quotes that I'm not going to read them all. But you know, some of these quotes really stand out to me. Look at Honus Wagner's quote, they were the third one down. There was a player, John Henry Lloyd, Pop Lloyd, great, great shortstop in the Negro leagues. And they called him the black Wagner. And Honus Wagner, there was this quote. Another great player was John Henry Lloyd. They called him the black Wagner. After I saw him play, I felt honored that they should name such a player after me. And again, quote after quote, were things like that. What, you know, a couple of things stood out to me was they asked, Wendell Smith asked them if they had seen, if the major leaguers had seen any Negro leaguers who could play in major league baseball. And you know, every single one of them said yes. Leo DeRosha said, yeah, there's been a million. And when they named them, it wasn't just everybody saying Josh Gibson and Satchel Page. It was, you know, Smokey Joe Williams and Rube Foster, Cool Pop of Bell, Pop Lloyd, you know, all these different guys that had the respect of the major leaguers. And another interesting thing too about the Pittsburgh Courier Survey, and that kind of leads into my next topic, was that none of the players or managers pointed the finger at Kennesaw Mountain Landis as to why the game isn't integrated. They all pointed to the owners. Obviously, Landis played a huge role in that. But, and that's something that we'll discuss in a minute here. But that survey kind of showed me the players, one, they knew the black players had the talent to be in the majors. They were perfectly fine with them being teammates. And the managers all said that they would be fine managing them. And they all said it was the owners that were keeping them out of baseball. So obviously, there were going to be players that spoke out against it. There were going to be players that were racist that were going to treat them poorly. There may have been managers that didn't tell the truth during the survey. But for the most part, these great stars of the 1930s and earlier are on record kind of saying, hey, we're okay with this, let's let's integrate the sport. Then that kind of brings me to Kennesaw Mountain Landis. And this could be a whole different discussion. I'm not going to get into too much detail with him here. But the way I approached Landis in my book is I kind of put the information out there and let the readers try and decide for themselves. He's the commissioner. He's a very, very powerful man. He was the judge who ruled against John Rockefeller and Standard Oil and broke up that monopoly. So he's not going to take crap from anybody. He's a guy that the buck stops with them. But he also has to answer to the owners. So what exactly is his role? He publicly has said, you know, there's no rule against African American players. I'm doing what the owners tell me. But behind closed doors is he, you know, pushing for segregation. Again, it's a topic we could debate on and off. He has a grandson that's still alive who has insisted that his grandfather is not a racist. It was not keeping them out that it was the owners. And you have people on the other side insisting that he had so much power that he could have changed and integrated the sport, you know, in a second. Wayne, I know it's kind of a loaded question, but kind of what's your opinion of Judge Landis' role here? I think he was a puppet in that respect. In everything else, I thought he was a very good commissioner. And I thought your book did a great job of being objective on that. And it really does leave a lot to the reader to make an assessment. And I think that, yes, ultimately, it does come down on the owners. You know, that's the leadership when it comes down to it or the owners. They had full control of players and everything in the game at that point. And that's something we don't remember. That's before there was a union. So the union couldn't press for it. And so, you know, when the owners are controlling every aspect of the game, it's scary if you're working for them and it's your income. It's your way for you to take care of your family and what have you. But so it was difficult to fight them. And fear is a powerful weapon. Yeah, that's a great point. I think it's really well put. I mean, he clearly had a hand in it and a big one. But my own personal opinion is to put him as the figurehead, take some of the onus off of the owners. And what you saw, too, and we'll get into this in a second, was the timeline of team integration. Judge Landis died in 1944. It still took three years for Jackie Robinson to break through. And by the time the whole league was integrated, it was 15 years, you know, it's not like when Judge Landis died, there was a flood of African-American players. So don't take that focus off the owners by putting it on Landis is kind of where I stand. But again, it's up to the readers to decide and research. And that kind of brings us to Jackie Robinson. And again, we could spend hours talking about his stuff. And there have been books and movies made and everything that goes along with that. But he, you know, he was the man. Branch Ricky signed him. A couple interesting things that I saw along that idea was Branch Ricky wanted to integrate the Cardinals when he was there. St. Louis was the southern most city in Major League Baseball. The city wasn't ready for it. Didn't happen. Ricky insists that when he moved over to the Dodgers, he had plans to integrate it from the start. And that was in 1943. And he says he, you know, made the owners aware, hey, if you hire me, we're going to look to integrate the Dodgers. One of the interesting things was how he was going to try people out to pick who was going to be integrated. So he established the fake team of the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, who were supposedly going to play in the Negro Leagues. And he had Jackie Robb-Tettle, you know, a handful of people come try out for him. Even the players themselves didn't really realize they were being scouted for the actual Brooklyn Dodgers. So I thought that was an interesting story I came across. Another interesting thing, too, was it wasn't just Jackie Robinson. We always see him as the first, but, you know, he went to play in AAA Montreal. So he was the one that was knocking at the door. But that same season, they signed Roy Campanella and Don Newcomb, and put them in single, or I think D-League, Nashua. So they were in the minors at the same time as Jackie Robinson. And John Wright, the pitcher, was Ricky's idea was to have three players in a great baseball. Jackie Robinson and John Wright and another teammate. So he put Jackie and John Wright on the Dodgers, I mean, on Montreal Royals, and it kind of went from there. That was 46. And, you know, before we get any further, I did Jackie Robinson. I wanted to kind of bring you back in, Wayne, and just kind of ask you as a baseball player, you kind of touched on it. But what does Jackie Robinson mean to you as a former Major League baseball player? Well, as a Major Leagueer, I think he instilled a lot of pride in a lot of ballplayers, not just African-Americans. I think the kind of person he was, you know, his character did a lot for the game, did a lot for, you know, African-Americans, and just, he was the right guy at the right time, I believe. And being drafted by the Dodgers, I had my first couple of spring trainings as a minor-leaguer in Dodger Town in Virgo Beach. And it was almost a shrine to Jackie all the time. And so you know what kind of impact he had on that organization. And he was just a special guy. You know, his career is a reminder that there should have been African-Americans before him. And, you know, that color is only just that. It's color. And that's the impact he made. He left a very big impression on the game. Absolutely. I'm sure he did. And, you know, a couple of clips right there of his debut in the International League, I wanted to bring up too. He made his debut 1946, Montreal Royals against the Jersey City Giants in Roosevelt Stadium. Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, right where my mother's from there, my mother's family, her and my uncles, when ice skating, played sports in Roosevelt Stadium. He made his debut there. And incredible. There's still one person still alive from that game. His name's Larry Miggins. He's 97 years old. He played for the Cardinals as well. But he was the starting third baseman for the Jersey City Giants. And, you know, Jackie Robinson had an incredible debut and that team just dominated. The Royals were 154, 154 wins, 54 losses that year, won the championship, one of the great minor league baseball teams of all time. Jackie hit 349 that year, proved himself to be way above that competition level. And he was a draw at the box office, which is crazy to me too, that, you know, major league owners, yeah, they're, you know, they had their racism, but they were also greedy. To see the amount of tickets people bought to go watch Jackie Robinson play minor league baseball just kind of showed, you know, just kind of surprised that they integrate sooner just for greed purposes. Another interesting figure is the guy on the right there, Clay Hopper, who was Jackie's manager in 1946 with the Royals. This guy, he was born in 1902 in the deep south of Mississippi. An open racist. If you research him, you can find some horrible things that he had said. He did not want Jackie Robinson on the team. He actually got promoted to be the manager of Montreal and told, said, send Jackie elsewhere. It didn't take Jackie Robinson very long to flip his hoppers opinion of him. He wanted him on the team. He was his biggest supporter. The next year, when it seemed like Jackie might integrate the Dodgers, but no decision was being made. Hopper was the one who stepped up and told the Dodgers, hey, make a decision and tell this man what you're going to do. Either tell him he's going to have his starting job and it'll be a Dodger on opening day or send them back to me where I'll take him. So it was interesting and I think speaks a lot to Jackie's character on how he could take a man like Clay Hopper and flip him in such a short amount of time. Guy was a lifetime racist to be one of Jackie Robinson's biggest supporters. I think that said a lot. And then this is just, again, Jackie's to put into perspective where Jackie Robinson stood in the American history. He's not just, you know, they're integrating Major League Baseball. He's a huge figure in American civil rights movement. So he, you know, integrated baseball in 1947. That was before the military was integrated, before Brown versus Board Education, before Rosa Parks. It was, you know, 16 years before Martin Luther King's speech, 17 years before the civil rights was passed. I mean, you kind of lose perspective sometimes, just how far ahead of his time Jackie Robinson was as far as American history. And then again, this is just a quick looking at the team integration timeline. These are the first African American players to play for each franchise. You know, like I said, there were eight, eight teams in each league, 16 franchises, and it didn't happen all at once. You see Jackie came in in 47. And still, you know, three, four years later, there's only a handful of teams that were integrated. It took all the way until 1959. So 12 years after Jackie Robinson and 15 years after land, this is death for the Red Sox to integrate. They were the last team. And in general, you saw that the teams that integrated quicker were the teams that had success. You know, they were bringing in all these great Negro League stars. Other teams that didn't were really struggling, kind of with the exception of the Yankees, but they had a guy named Joe DiMaggio out there, and he was able to kind of get them through that era. And that brings us to kind of like the second part of my book and the presentation here. So that first part was kind of leading up to Jackie. And the second part was something you mentioned earlier, Wayne, of just the flood of great African American ballplayers that came after Jackie Robinson. And just take a look at some of these guys up on the screen here. These are players that debuted in the 1950s, you know, not long after Jackie Robinson. They were kids when Jackie Robinson debuted. They saw that for themselves. And they played into the 1970s. Each one of these guys played from the 50s to the 70s. You know, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson. Just incredible names. And now as we kind of look and try to celebrate the things that African Americans have done in Major League Baseball, Wayne, I got another question for you. You're starting a team here. You get one of these guys as a young player, which guy are you picking to start on your team? Well, I think you just put their names in a hat and I drew one. It wouldn't hurt me. But I've always been and always will be a huge Hank Aaron fan. Just his style of play is it just resonates with me. And he's so even keel and a model of consistency. A guy who never hit 50 home runs but ended up hitting 755 home runs. I mean, if you take every single home run he hit and you take him away and you're racing to zero, he still has over 3000 hits in his career. I mean, he's just that kind of player and my type of player, very humble, always called himself just the line drive hitter, you know, and there's just no no way around it. I would I would take Hank Aaron every day. Nice. That's awesome. I mean, yeah, you take him out there and plug him in and let him be in the outfield for 25 years producing and they said line drive and playing with character being a leader. Yes. Can't go wrong there. It's I like what you said, Joe is a good way around the question. Just pull an aim out of a hat and you're not going wrong with any of these guys. I might go Willie Mays. I always love Willie. I mean, I love all these guys, but you know, just the defense he brought to that five tool. Yes. And he brought that flair to the game too. Like you said, you're not going wrong with with that with any of these guys. And Willie a great storyteller. Willie's a great actor. Have you ever interacted with Willie Mays amendment? Yes. Yes. When I was with the Giants, he was always in the clubhouse. And so I my favorite picture of all time is Sandy Kofax. And I asked him about Sandy Kofax. I said, I got to know how it was facing Sandy Kofax. He said, well, that's how he just looks up in the sky. Well, he said, let me put it this way. Sandy Kofax was known for tipping his pitches. We knew when that curveball was coming, he said, but it was so good, we still couldn't hit it. Even when we knew. And he also said, one thing really made me laugh. He said, Sandy Kofax's curveball was so good that if the mound was any higher, the ball would come back to him. That's awesome, man. That's great. Just awesome that Willie still with us. He's the oldest living Hall of Famer right now and incredible player. And then, you know, in my book, I kind of talk about the different waves of African American stars that came through and here's some of the guys that started their careers in the sixties and played into the late seventies, early eighties. And again, these are the guys as kids that were watching Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and some of those guys. And then onto the eighties. And that's kind of our era. These are the guys that watched Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Reggie Jackson. And, you know, you kind of see how the different ages kind of blend into each other and influence each other. Now, this is the age that you and I watch baseball. You got these of all the Famers here, Winfield, Gwynn Puckett, Jim Rice, Ricky, and, you know, some other guys, too. Other great stars we'll get to in a second. But of this era, way in the eighties and nineties, who are some of your favorite guys that you enjoyed watching growing up? Well, the eighties, it was a great decade for just personalities and players. I mean, you know, I'm looking on your page right there. And I see Dave Winfield, who was the only athlete to ever be drafted in the first round in three different sports. So, I mean, that tells you what kind of what kind of athletes we have here. But I'm very biased towards Doc Gooden, Dwight Gooden, Ricky Henderson, and Bo Jackson. I think the reasons are obvious. I always said, other than co-facts, it was just the most beautiful pitcher to watch throw a ball was Dwight Gooden. It was the smoothest thing I ever watched. You know, it was so inspiring. It's like, that's how I want to be. That's who I want to be as a pitcher. And then, yeah, Ricky was maybe the most unique player ever that I've seen, just as far as, you know, combination of everything, especially the speed and longevity, really, too. And then you have Bo Jackson, who's probably the best athlete I've ever seen in my life anywhere. Absolutely. Just awesome guys. And I love all those same guys that you mentioned, too. Then you talk about bringing the swag in. We kind of mentioned that too. And this is an excuse to get a picture of Oscar Gamble in my slideshow. But, you know, you compare the 60s to the 70s, and they brought that flair to the game, just excitement, stealing bases. You forget that there's a big era where the stolen base kind of went away. You know, guys up until the early 70s couldn't have facial hair. They hadn't hair had it been cut short. And these guys just kind of brought that swag, Vita Blue, Oscar Gamble, Mickey Rivers, just made this game so much more exciting and fun to watch. And here are some of the guys from that 90s era, Kenny Loft and Dave Stewart. And you mentioned Bo and Dion, Albert Bell. I mean, just awesome, awesome guys. And that kind of brings us into the discussion today. And, you know, to base sport in African Americans and major league baseball today, as we kind of start to maybe wind down a little bit here. But Wayne, you know, you and I had kind of discussed that the participation level among African American players has decreased. It was at its peak in the 80s. You know, those players in the 80s, the African American players were brought up watching Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and all those guys. It was at about 18%, not to bore everybody with numbers, but about 18% of the league in the 80s was African American. When the strike of 94 hit for about 15 straight years, that number decreased all the way down to like 6%. What are some of the reasons that you see? And again, there's a million different things. It's a huge topic. But the participant, what are you, I'm sorry, what do you see as some of the driving factors that help force a decrease of participation among African Americans? Well, I say partially that 94 strike, it drove quite a few people away from the game for a while. And it may be some forever. And, you know, I think with other sports being very popular, basketball in the 90s was in 80s and 90s was very big. I think that helped, you know, take more athletes that way. And football is the NFL, the NFL. And I also think that, you know, things like, if you come back to college and you look at the NCAA at the Division 1 level, teams get less than 12 scholarships to distribute to players of roughly 35 players, which adds the financial aspect. And, you know, I looked for some numbers and, you know, as of 2016, the average net worth of a white family was $171,000, while for black families, it was $17,150. So I think the cost of playing the game kind of hurt as well. So it starts way before, you know, the professional level, you know, it starts way early. Yeah, I agree. And the things we see, you know, the travel ball and the lessons and all this crap for lack of a better term that seeped into the game is kind of pricing out, you know, lower income people from playing the sport, you know, it's so much easier to grab a basketball and go down to the playground than it is to pay $3,000, $4,000 to join a travel team. People in the inner cities just cannot do that. They don't have the luxury of going to lessons and doing all this other stuff. Yeah. So I think it takes, you know, the first step of that, of solving the problem is better understanding the problem. Yeah. Absolutely. And again, it's a multi-layered topic. It's something we could sit here and discuss for a long time. Like I had a great conversation with Bob Kendrick at the Negro Leagues Museum about this. I liked his line. He said, you know, we're living in a microwave society where you want things instantly. And in the inner cities, that applies even more than it does out in the suburbs. So, you know, you're seeing people, you know, they don't want to go spend five years in the minor leagues. You're not fast-tracked to the major leagues. Whereas in basketball, if you're seeing that as a way out, you know, you go to college, you play a year, you're one and done, you can be in the NBA. And right or wrong, you know, you talk to kids of that era or that age, and they all think they could be in the NBA, whether they could or not. So that's the sport they're going to, you know, and then the better athletes, you know, are sticking with that. And I like what you mentioned too about baseball. That was kind of my link. You know, the different generations of African Americans. You asked African American kids in the 70s and 80s who they want to be like, and they're saying, early 80s, they're saying Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, you know, like that. You get to the end of the 1980s and you say, you know, who do you want to be like? And it's Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, probably Bo, you know, but Bo's football too. So, you know, that factor has to, you know, it's a lot of different things that go into play. Also the globalization of the sport, like you mentioned, that Latino players make up 25% of the league now. So it would be tough, you know, if to ever get back to the levels where it was close to 20%, but there's no reason why they can't start ticking up. And I kind of, things have leveled off. The percentage is still low. It's still in the single digits, but it's higher than that low point of the 6.7%, I think, was the low point. And now just throughout my book, the next few slides, handful of slides have some of the topics that I covered in my book. I mentioned early on how many great instances, how many great players, how many great events have happened around African American players in major league baseball history. And throughout the whole second half of my book, I'm kind of talking about, you know, special nights and fun curiosities and incredible records that African Americans have. And here's a player, Roy Campanella, who I always admired. Just an absolutely phenomenal player and person. I think this was something that's always intrigued me was Roy Campanella Knight. Roy Campanella was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident, horrible accident that happened to him in 1958. This scene, this scene on the right is Pee Wee Reese wheeling him out, paralyzing his wheelchair on Roy Campanella Knight. The Dodgers held in LA Coliseum Roy Campanella Knight to raise funds to help him. 93,000 people showed up to support Roy Campanella and raise funds as he was paralyzed. That's, you know, 12 years before or 12 years after Jackie Robinson integrated the sport. So a decade earlier, black people weren't allowed to play baseball. Here we are 12 years later. We're 90,000 people plus are supporting an African American star who was injured. That was interesting to me. Satchel Gage, another person we could go on forever with, but Satchel allegedly was 45, 46 years old of major league baseball all-star, two-time all-star. He finally got into the majors in 1948. I'm sorry, 1948. He was the rookie of the year World Series winner. And, you know, that's at the age of 41, allegedly. And one of the cool things too was, you know, he came back to pitch. They brought that picture right there. They brought it back to pitch for the Kansas City A's, you know, at the age of, you know, 58, I think, at the time. And he pitched three scoreless innings against the Red Sox. And it wasn't a joke. It was a regular season game. He went out there, Carly Strimsky and those guys, three innings, one hit, nearly 60 years old. Just incredible. You can go on and on about Satchel Gage. Kurt Flood, today is Kurt Flood's 85th birthday. Absolutely incredible. One of the towering figures in the sport as far as labor. Kurt Flood, of course, sued Bowie Kuhn and challenged the Reserve Clause, sacrificed his own career, you know, fighting free agency. You know, his quote was, after 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel I'm a piece of property to be brought and sold irrespective of my wishes. So Kurt Flood fought for free agency. He didn't win, but he was the first person to set that emotion and say, hey, the players have some power here. Another guy that belongs in the Hall of Fame and happy bullet or he's passed away years ago, but a happy 85th to Kurt Flood. 71 Pirates were the first team to have a full starting nine of African American players. You know, historical team, historical franchise, World Series winners. Again, you see the teams that were progressive in integration were the ones that had incredible success and some awesome Hall of Famers on their Clemente Starchel. Black Aces was another thing that we kind of talked about in the book is African American pitchers who have won 20 games. Mudd Grant, who just passed away being one of them, he wrote the book called The Black Aces and you see there on the list African American pitchers who were 20 game winners in Major League Baseball. He brings us to Tony Clark who's the current head of the MLBPA. First African American to be in that position and, you know, he's writing his legacy right now. I include this slide. I use my platform. There's a group of 500 former major leaguers who do not have a pension. You know, I just think it would be awesome if Tony Clark was able to have that as his legacy as the person to put that in place. Major League Baseball had put into place people who were left out of the pension. The Negro leaguers, people who played before 1947, they were given a settlement agreement. There's 500 former major leaguers, many African Americans. You see those pictured there as Aaron Pointer, brother of the Pointer sisters. They went on to be an NFL ref and Harold Reynolds brother. They're among that group. So nothing's been done yet. You hope that Tony Clark as a former player would help these people. Just kind of my two cents there. This was some of the percentages that we kind of talked about. I'm sorry I'm rushing through. I want to leave some time for your thoughts to Wayne. But you can kind of see in that representation, the participation among, you know, white baseball players and Latino and black players. So that's a Sabre study that was done between 1946 and 2016. And you can kind of see how the Latino population increased. How there is that bubble in those middle years there with African American participation. And you can even see up top the Asian players starting to come into Major League Baseball as well. We're kind of getting towards the end here. We have a few minutes left. We have five minutes left. You know, a couple things on this screen, you know, these are some of the great players that we've seen African American players. Wayne, you played with Barry Bonds. You played against a lot of these guys. You know, kind of as we wrap this whole thing up and I'm sorry if I rushed through some stuff, but I'll kick it off to you. What are some of your final thoughts in discussing all these topics? Well, it's very humbling to learn about African Americans in the Major League. And I'm very proud, as I've said, to be part of integration of baseball. And no doubt MLB is a much better game because of integration. You know, Jackie Robinson to me is on my personal Mount Rushmore of baseball just because as a player, you know, a trailblazer, a competitor, a role model and a man full of integrity, you know, his courage to see it through, it may never be matched again. And people may never realize what he had to do to see it through. So, you know, it's just as I've always said about this is this is a significant opportunity for me to make baseball a better place to get the information out. And this is a great platform to do it. That's great. And I kind of just alluded to it real quick. You were teammates with Barry Bonds and he's the name that we didn't mention. We didn't get too much into that era, you know, spending a lot of time in history. But what was that like to watch Barry Bonds? Yeah, his peak there. Well, you know, as much as a teammate as I was of his, that was the most fun I've ever had watching one player for 162 games. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't as you were going out there saying, man, what, you know, can he do something like, no, it's not whether you can, it's like, what is he going to do tonight? And, you know, that was the last year that he won the MVP. And his numbers were atmospheric. I mean, they were just incredible. It was the first year anybody ever had 200 walks and he had over 220. So, you know, that just shows you the respect pitchers had for him that year. And he still, he still had a hit 43 home runs that year. And he won a batting title. So, I mean, it was just so fun to watch one player hit a baseball. Yeah, I mean, just as a fan, incredible watch from across the country here in New Jersey. And I can't imagine, you know, you having that front row seat to watch that every day. And just, just something else. And, you know, and then wrapping up here too, just in my mind, I'm thinking of, you know, just in my book is like I said, it's a history. It tries to be all encompassing doesn't get too in depth. Just because, you know, the space to do it, there's there's books written on entire topics to dive in. But, you know, as part of the slide show, I'm thinking now people that we didn't mention people like Larry Dobie. Larry Dobie was the first American League African American player. He came only a few months after Jackie Robinson. And Jackie was a little bit more mature. You know, Larry Dobie was younger. He, you know, he dealt with all the same things that that Jackie Robinson did. You know, he kind of gets forgotten. And you can't mention this topic without bringing up Larry Dobie, Monty Irvin, you know, a lot of those early guys, and then talk about managing too. You know, those first manager, first black managers and coaches, the Frank Robinson, Larry Dobie, again, Buck O'Neill, you know, was one of very early African American scout and and coach, you know, another legend Hall of Famer of the sport. I mean, you could sit here, battle off names and go way over our time. But, you know, all the way up through Dusty Baker and winning that World Series this year, just it's such an incredible history. And that's kind of what I tried to capture in that book, is that, you know, those first 50 years of segregation, what did we miss out on? Look how awesome things were from 1947 all the way up through today. Look at Ken Griffey Jr., Joe Morgan, Dave Winfield, I mean, just just incredible, incredible players, Lou Brock. And that all got missed, you know, in Major League Baseball. And another thing, you know, we've been mentioning and referring to it as Major League Baseball, but we'd also be remiss that, you know, the Negro Leagues are recognized now as Major League Baseball. That happened in December of 2020. So, you know, my book was written before that. So, you know, when you refer to major leagues, it's the American National League and the American Association, Federal League. You know, but now it includes the Negro Leagues. And I think that's awesome as well. So, that's all the time we have. Wayne, I can't thank you enough. Your appreciation for history is incredible. You know, the insight you lead or you left us was phenomenal, exactly what we were looking for. It's been an honor to write this book for Roman in Littlefield through my agent, Curtis Russell. Thank you again to the U.S. National Archives. I thank my family and friends for encouraging my love of baseball. You know, my dad and my uncle Duke introduced me to the sport. I have a picture of my grandfather from 1919 playing baseball, hanging up in my office, a picture of my aunt in the 40s playing baseball. It's something that me and my family have loved. And baseball is always best enjoyed with family and friends. So, I thank you, Wayne. I thank the U.S. National Archives. This has been an incredible experience and I hope we're able to reach a lot of people today.