Forgotten Negro league players finally get recognition

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Ron Mott, NBC News, Kansas City

We are now in the thick of the season owned in large part by the boys of summer, carrying out America’s past time nightly on major-league diamonds around this country. But in a past era, only white men were allowed to play on those fields of dreams at the professional level; hence, the formation of the Negro Leagues.

Amid headstones of chiseled and polished granite, at a Topeka Kansas Cemetery, Jeremy Krock, an Illinois Anesthesiologist, has purchased a new marker and is working hard to give a name to some African-American baseball heroes, who were invisible in death. Many of those men never became household names like their white counterparts, and sadly, some of those black players passed away and hardly anyone noticed, until now.

Click here to view a slideshow of some of the nameless Negro Leaguers being honored

“They played in anonymity and I don’t want to see them buried forever in anonymity,” said Krock. “To know that these players are out there and to know where they’re buried and to just walk out there and see a plot of grass is an injustice.”

WATCH MORE NIGHTLY NEWS COVERAGE OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES HERE:
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Krock started the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project, paying tribute to men whose legacies fill a Kansas City museum in their honor. To date he has dedicated 22 headstones so far, with more to come. An injustice to the nameless baseball heroes of the past, he is trying to change, one grave at a time.

Bob Kendrick is president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “Each time that he uncovers one and brings new found light to these individuals, it now increases the awareness about the Negro Leagues.”

Of course, not all Negro Leaguers played in the shadow of obscurity. Guys like Satchel Paige enjoyed broader notoriety in the major leagues. But for every Satchel Paige or Jackie Robinson, there are many more previously anonymous players, like Dink Mothells.

Patricia Hawkins knows that better than most. Her dad, Bobby Robinson, worked quietly into his eighties in Chicago’s Sewer Department after a long career in the Negro Leagues. He died in 2002 and got a grave marker last summer.