Bob Kendrick. Courtesy image.
Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is speaking in the Old Mill School gym at 5pm on the subject of ‘How the Negro Leagues Changed Baseball and America, Too.’ The event’s origins date back to last month’s MVLL Opening Day Parade, when MVLL minor league team the Kansas City Monarchs held a banner that paid tribute to the legendary Jackie Robinson.
Kendrick will tell the stories of the players who were banned from the white major leagues in the decades prior to Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947. On Saturday, Kendrick will watch the Monarchs and the Homestead Grays – both teams are named in honor of the Negro Leagues – play at Boyle Park.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a “one of Kendrick’s favorite topics is the epic 1942 Negro League World Series, a Monarchs sweep over the favored Grays that featured seven Hall of Famers: Satchel Paige, Hilton Smith and Willard Brown of the Monarchs and Josh Gibson, Jud Wilson, Ray Brown and Buck Leonard of the Grays.”
Sunday’s event is free and open to the public. Old Mill is at 352 Throckmorton Ave.