You guys like Jackie Robinson and that Hank Aaron came in and obviously dominated, hitting the ball and playing the outfield.

You saw guys like Satchel Paige come out and pitch and there's really be a dominant pitcher which paved the way for guys like my dad and LaTroix Hawkins and all these guys.

Willie O'Reade, Fritz Pollard, and an exclusive interview with the great Patrick Mahomes,

all on this week's Black Diamonds as we pay homage to the barrier breakers.

When Andrew Rube Foster formed the Negro National League in Kansas City in 1920, he actually thought that he would create a league that was so dynamic that he would force Major League Baseball's hand to expand.

Under Foster's vision, you would have had complete integration

well before 1947. Rube was almost right. Instead, Major League Baseball would ultimately focus on bringing

black players as opposed to black teams into its fold.

But baseball had actually been integrated prior to Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color

barrier in 1947.

Integration goes back as far as a guy named William Edward White. William Edward White played one game in what we now

know to be the major leagues. This was in 1879. Now, I'm not quite sure if William White knew

that he was black.

And certainly those who allowed him to play did not know that he was black.

But William White is believed to have been the byproduct of an affair that his slave owner had with a black woman who was enslaved at that time. And so white technically holds the distinction

of being the first to play in what would be deemed a major league. And then that moves us to,

of course, Moses Fleetwood Walker. Moses Fleetwood Walker, as we like to say here at the Negro League Baseball Museum, was the first

known black.

He was of darker skin to play in what would be considered a major league.

This goes back to about 1883.

Moses Fleetwood Walker was a bare-handed catcher.

Ouch.

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