To be donning the Negro League uniforms, it was an honor just to be a part of that.

You know, it's an eye-opening experience to realize the type of community you're connected to.

On May 25th of this year,

I had the opportunity to witness something that was profoundly special.

The recreation of the East-West All-Star game played at Double Day Field in Cooperstown, New York.

First and foremost, kudos to my friends over at the National Baseball Hall of Fame,

because this was their brainchild to coincide with a wonderful new history of black baseball exhibit called

the souls of the game, which I was proud to serve on the committee that worked on this

groundbreaking project. And if you're in Cooperstown, please make your way into the Hall of Fame to see this incredible exhibition that chronicles the history of black baseball from his early stages through the Negro Leagues into its current state as it relates to black participation and particularly American-born

black participation in our sport. It is an amazing exhibition. But the highlight for me of that

weekend was the recreation of the East West All-Star Game.

That was the Negro League's version of the All-Star Game.

It debuted in 1933, the same year that Major League Baseball's All-Star Game was introduced.

And as I remind my visitors here at the Negro Leaks Baseball Museum, yes, it did

outdraw Major League Baseball's All-Star Gate. They would put over 50,000 fans in Chicago's

Comiskey Park for this showcase event. Ernest Burke, former pitcher and outfielder for the Baltimore E-Light Giants, courtesy of the University of Baltimore.

We had an East and West game that we played in Chicago, and that stadium was packed.

I mean, it was standing room only, and it was packed, had people come from all over the world to see the All-Star game there.

One of the greatest sporting events in American sports history, and it's almost as if it never happened.

And I'm here to tell you that it did, and it happened in grandiose fashion. And as my friend

Buck O'Neill would say, black folks would come from as far west as Los Angeles by train, as far

south as New Orleans by train, as far east as New York, converging on Chicago for this showcase event, and the stars came out

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