Jackie Wilson
When you ask about the first black baseball player, you can't try to determine that based on the innumerable number of backlot games played as baseball became the popular national sport it is today. People of all colors and races have been playing baseball in one form or another since the game first came about. Who can even say when the first game of true "baseball" was even played? It's not as easy a question as it seems.
When anyone talks about the first black baseball player, they are really talking about the first black "professional" baseball player. The first instances of black baseball players would be back in 1920, when Rube Foster began to organize the Negro National League. The idea was even older, with the first concept of a black baseball league coming up in 1907.
But the first black baseball player to play for a previously all-white professional team was Jackie Robinson. He played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in April of 1947.
Before being signed by Branch Richey of the Dodgers, Robinson was a star athlete at UCLA in several sports. He had also played baseball on teams in the Negro League. He was signed by Richey in 1945, and he then spent the season of 1946 in the Dodger minor league.
During that first major league year, he won the vaunted Rookie of the Year award. He would go on from there to win many more. The greatest honor that Robinson was granted was the retirement of his number 42 from all of Major League Baseball. Only Jackie Robinson has been given such a high honor in the sport.
But as mentioned earlier, he is by no means the first black man to simply play the sport of baseball. He was mainly the first to cross that line into an all-white league and be successful doing it. Before him, there were other players like Roy Campanello, Josh Gibson, Buck O'Neil, Piper Davis, Pumpsie Green and Leroy "Satchel" Paige.
Even so, Jackie Robinson will always remain as the one player who changed the history of baseball as the first black baseball player.
Wiley B. Channell is the editor of BaseballFarming.com - the information resource for baseball fans and players. Find more about famous baseball players at his site.
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