Welcome everyone to Long Ball Legacies, where we every single episode dive into the stories and the players and the legends that make up the mythology of baseball and have made this the game that we love so much. My name's Daniel Port, and I am excited to have you here with us today.

As it's February, and that makes it Black History Month,

and as every year I like to take during Black History Month,

and shot a spotlight on some lesser-known or less talked about African-American players

who had a huge impact in major league baseball

and in baseball history in general.

And it's necessarily easy to go in the direction to talk about Jackie Robinson or things

like that.

And obviously those players should be talked about.

But you can go all over the internet and see this time of the year.

Incredible, fantastic Jackie Robinson stories.

And eventually I'm going to get the telling Jack Robinson story here on this podcast.

But I wanted to talk about a lesser known or less talked about African-American player

where I feel like had a huge impact on the history of Major League Baseball.

And if you'll bear with a former theater major here, I'd like to make an analogy.

So we've all seen the movie Spartacus, or at least most of us have heard of or seen the final scenes of the classic Kirk Douglas movie.

Now, in the aforementioned scene that I'm talking about, the Romans have captured

and confronted the members of a slave rebellion led by a man named Spartacus.

The Romans give the captured slaves in ultimatum.

Give up Spartacus and they all live.

Otherwise, they all die but crucifixion, which is decidedly an awful way to go out.

After a moment of steely resolve, Spartacus rises to give himself up to save everyone,

...