A year with the Negro Leagues: Player visits to iconic KC museum connect past, present
The tour begins with chicken wire. Before the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum permits its visitors to weave through an expansive history told through multiple visual vignettes, they must first glance at a ballfield through a mesh fence.
On the other side stand a dozen statues of “some of the baddest brothers to ever play the game,” museum president Bob Kendrick says as he opens a tour. There, cast in detailed bronze, are life-size likenesses of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell. All are situated on the small field at their respective positions, forming the “Field of Legends.”
Onlookers, at least for a moment, remain segregated from them.
“You have to feel what they felt,” Kendrick says. “You have to learn their story before you earn the right to walk onto their field.”
That comes last. Kendrick’s opening monologue lasts nearly half an hour. He shares the resumes, statistics and stories of those 12 players, managers and league founders. They have grown in lore with each passing year.
Some of the game’s best players and nation’s influential civil rights leaders have stood in front of Kendrick, ears hanging on every word of a man built for the job. Kendrick is a master storyteller, part entertainer and part historian, who is even clothed for the part —“dressed to the nines,” just as they did it back in those days.
Ahead of the Negro Leagues’ 100th anniversary in 2020, The Star joined Kendrick for some of his more prominent tours over a full year through 2019 — with players past and present, some with Hall of Fame honors and some with Hall of Fame ambitions, veterans and rookies and even one current shortstop who will see a picture of his grandfather during his visit.
The stories alongside the chicken wire — and the many that will soon follow over the hours-long path — often begin in the same manner: Buck always used to say ... The spirit of Buck O’Neil, a former Kansas City Monarchs player and later the first African American coach in Major League Baseball, lives on through the building located in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine District. He shaped this place more than any other, his life’s work best illustrated in former Star columnist Joe Posnanski’s book, The Soul of Baseball.
“In my mind,” Kendrick says of the iconic man who died in 2006 at 95, “I’m trying to keep Buck alive.”
Perhaps more than any other single feature, that’s what this museum offers. Life. It’s a tale of how players and minorities survived during the era (1920-1950) and the perseverance required to simply play a game they loved. A tale of how their legacies live on today.
Because they do. In ways both purposeful and accidental, the ways of the Negro Leagues are scattered throughout modern Major League Baseball.
In late 2013, the Royals sent their minor-league pitcher and players of the year through Kendrick’s voyage. As they concluded on the field — the reward for completing the trip is seeing those same statues absent the chicken wire — the minor-league pitcher of the year walked to the mound and rubbed his right elbow along the statue of Satchel Paige, the ace of the Negro Leagues.
A year later, that 23-year-old would crack the Royals major-league rotation for the first time. He’d win 14 games and post a 3.20 earned-run average. He’d become a fixture on a staff that reached the Royals’ first World Series in three decades.
They called him Ace.
Changing times
In February 1920, a coalition of black baseball team owners met inside a Kansas City YMCA. The framework of the Negro Leagues was born there, out of necessity — black players were not allowed in the major leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.
One block and one century away, the foundation of the museum’s story predates integration. But it nevertheless preserves a wall for Robinson’s legacy, a sign hanging above it: “CHANGING TIMES.”
On an August afternoon this year, Kendrick stood in front of the Robinson display, his audience swelling as the tour progressed. Among the onlookers: Kansas City Royals pitchers Brad Keller and Glenn Sparkman and Baltimore Orioles shortstop Richie Martin.
“And there,” Kendrick said, alternating between glances at Martin and pointing toward a photo of the 1945 Kansas City Monarchs, “is your grandfather.”
Martin stepped forward to take a look. Eventually, he would capture his own photo. In his rookie season with Baltimore, he felt compelled to visit the museum during a road trip to Kansas City.
His maternal grandfather, Walter Thomas, played five seasons in the Negro Leagues. Martin’s mother talked of him often. Thomas wanted to play in the major leagues. Wanted to prove his worth. The rules forbade it.
Sixty years later, Martin would hear his name called in the first round of the MLB draft.
“I’ve read books and seen things online, but to see everything in person is amazing,” Martin said. “I’m blown away, man.”
Moments later, Kendrick surprised Martin with Monarchs home and away jerseys, identical to the ones his grandfather would have worn. As he left, Martin called his mom.
He’s here. They got a picture of your dad here.
A tribute in today’s MLB
They played the game with a certain pizzazz. As visitors navigate the museum’s exhibits — tucked behind the outfield fence — Kendrick describes the showmanship of the Negro Leagues. They had speed. They traded barbs on the field. They wore their uniforms how they damn well pleased.
Which all etched so neatly into the personality of the first major-leaguer to drop by the museum this season. Seattle Mariners second baseman Dee Gordon had been here before — he rarely skips the destination when his team is in town. But in April, with the Mariners in Kansas City to play the Royals, he brought teammates Tim Beckham and Mallex Smith, and his father, former Royals pitcher Tom Gordon.
Years ago, on his first trip, Dee Gordon was awestruck by Cool Papa Bell and the tales he’d hear Kendrick weave. “Cool Papa Bell was so fast he could flip off the switch and be in bed by the time the light shut off,” Kendrick says, explaining how a short in the switch rang that story true.
“It makes me feel good to know the way I play the game is exactly the same,” Gordon said. “It’s kind of hereditary, you know what I’m saying?
“It started with them. I play just like them — joyous, love the game, entertain as much as possible.”
Gordon purchased a painting after that first trip, his only birthday present that year: a picture of Bell and Paige. Days later, he rolled up his pant legs to his knee so the socks in his uniform would show as he dashed around the bases. He still does it during day games.
Why?
“That’s the way Cool Papa Bell did it.”
Paying homage
As players make the left turn to enter the museum, they’re greeted with a Bible verse.
“My son, if you aspire to be a servant of the Lord, prepare yourself for testing, set a straight course and keep to it, and do not be dismayed in the face of adversity.”
Kendrick reads it aloud each time he guides a group. “That was Negro Leagues baseball,” he says.
The tour has its staples — some lines that never change. There’s the quip about the baseball signed by Ty Cobb. Many teammates labeled Cobb a racist, yet his name sits alongside the signature of several black players.
“As Buck used to say,” Kendrick says, “I know Cobb signed that ball first.”
There’s the anecdote about Negro Leaguers eating peanut butter and crackers on the bus. They weren’t sure they would be served a meal in town during a road trip. The crackers would become dinner.
“That’s mind-boggling,” then-Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Tommy Pham said during an April visit. “I’m frustrated to hear something like that. With my experience in this game, hearing the adversity that all these players faced and what they did to overcome it was truly amazing.”
There’s a narrative of the perseverance. And there’s a narrative of acceptance. The league welcomed Latin players. It toured Japan. It welcomed women players and embraced female ownership, that segment of its history chronicled with a new display.
Each of the museum’s elements seems to strike current major-leaguers differently.
“Just learning little, small things they were able to do,” Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen said during his May visit. “They’re innovators. Just playing the game, they were innovators.”
For 90 minutes, athletes with a constant demand on their time, attention and presence rarely speak. Kendrick rarely takes a breath before the tours reach their pinnacle, a walk into the Field of Legends.
Almost on cue, players remove their iPhones from their pockets and pose with the bronze statues.
“Paying homage to those guys and just knowing your roots, knowing what they did, what they went through …” McCutchen said the day after his visit. “It was great to be able to go there.”
‘There’s much more to the story’
In 2006, as his left arm lured major-league scouts, Andrew Miller shot up draft boards. A hard-throwing lefty from the University of North Carolina, he was even in consideration for the top overall pick held by the Royals, an honor that instead went to Luke Hochevar.
But away from the mound, a class tasked Miller with writing a 15-page paper. The professor allowed the students to pick the topic.
Miller’s choice: The Negro Leagues.
So on a mid-August day, as he strolled through the building’s glass doors, he knew a bit of background on this place. Or so he thought.
“I wish I would’ve had access to the museum — I’ll put it that way,” said Miller, now pitching with the St. Louis Cardinals. He added, “It’s just neat to watch how American history and the history of baseball evolving kind of go hand in hand — and how baseball maybe actually had a big hand in us as a country accepting and moving forward. I think obviously we all know Jackie Robinson, but there’s so much more to the story.”
The Hall of Game
Dave Stewart played 16 seasons in MLB. Pitched for five teams. Played in 30 different ballparks. Won three championships and a 1989 World Series MVP award.
All of that frames his first visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
“There’s only one other experience I can remember where I was in absolute awe, and it was the first time I walked through the monuments at Yankee Stadium,” Stewart said. “Walking through this museum makes you feel like you’re at home.”
Stewart, Eric Davis, Fred McGriff and Dave Parker comprised this year’s annual Hall of Game class, a newer fundraising initiative for the NLBM to bring some of the sport’s best former players to Kansas City.
Stewart had visited before. Davis had not. Growing up in Los Angeles, he didn’t know about the history of the Negro Leagues, in which the Kansas City Monarchs were the westernmost team.
“Being here helps us understand where our country was and where our game was,” Davis said. “Everybody should see this. Every kid should see this. Not just black. Every kid in the world should get a chance to taste this and see what they had to endure.”
Passing the torch
The year’s most notable outings featured recognizable names. The players of which you’ve probably heard. The Hall of Famers. The All-Stars.
Several summer journeys featured aspiring minds. Schools take field trips to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. And what better education could there be?
“It’s important to let people know how far we’ve come but also to empower them to keep progressing the fight,” Kendrick says. “Because we still have a long way to go in race relations.”
In late July, 18 days after honoring the newly enshrined Hall of Game class, Kendrick welcomed a group of college-aged players from the Ban Johnson summer league in Kansas City. After more than an hour, as they were set to depart the museum, one of the players backtracked. The last few moments of the tour were still ringing for Roman Sherman, a Maple Woods pitcher who graduated from Rockhurst High School in 2016.
“Hold up,” he told the teammates who joined him on the trip. “I gotta do something.”
Minutes earlier, Kendrick had told the Yordano Ventura story. How Ventura — the one nicknamed “Ace” — went over and rubbed elbows with the Paige statue during his visit. How he keyed a World Series run by the Royals the following year.
Sherman walked about 10 steps to the Paige statue, swung out his right elbow and slid it along the elbow of Paige.
“My favorite pitcher was Yordano Ventura. I have his rookie card and a picture of him slinging the ball,” Sherman says. “I had to rub elbows.”
Kansas City Star sportswriter Blair Kerkhoff contributed to this story.
This story was originally published December 27, 2019 at 5:00 AM.