I would never trade that HBCU experience for anything.

I learned very own and I grew a lot faster and knew what it was to be a young adult.

In the eyes of so many who really don't have a true understanding of what the Negro leagues represented both on and off the field, the Negro leagues themselves were seen as

some kind of vaudeville act, a sideshow,

and as players were considered to be hobos, vagabonds, tramps, illiterate.

But that's not the real story.

The real story is, and is very eye-opening, that some 40% of the athletes who played in

the Negro leagues had some level of college education. And I find that factor, or it's so

interesting, because I go back to the letter that Larry McPhail, the managing partner of the New York Yankees,

had written to New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia back in 1945.

And of course, if you are a fan of the program Black Diamonds, and I hope that you are, you might remember that

Curtis Granderson voiced this letter in an episode, and he found that letter somewhat shocking

as he was reading and voicing that for that episode of Black Diamonds. And in that letter, Larry McPhail essentially highlights all the reasons why

players from the Negro Leagues should not be welcomed into Major League Baseball,

or in this case, why integration was such a horrible idea.

And as you've heard me say on this program, he did offer a few points of validity.

For instance, he would say that if we sign players from the Negro Leagues, we will put the

Negro Leagues out of business.

That was certainly going to be a byproduct of

integration. He would go on to say that you cannot just take those players away from their

Negro League team because they are bound by contract. Absolutely right. Now, as you all know,

Branch Rickey didn't necessarily think that because Branch Rickey

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