When you ask about the first black baseball player, you can’t try to determine him based on the countless number of backlot games that were played when 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 came into being. Who can tell when the first real “baseball” game was played? It is not as easy a question as it seems.
When someone talks about the first black baseball player, they are really talking about the first “professional” black baseball player. The first instances of black baseball players date back to 1920, when Rube Foster began organizing the Negro National League. The idea was even older, with the first concept of a Negro baseball league 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 1947.
Prior to being signed by the Dodgers’ Branch Richey, Robinson was a star athlete at UCLA in various sports. He had also played baseball on Negro League teams. He was signed by Richey in 1945, and then spent the 1946 season in the minor league Dodgers.
During that first year of Major League Baseball, he won the Rookie of the Year award. He would go from there to win many more. The highest honor given to Robinson was the retirement of his number 42 from all major leagues. Only Jackie Robinson has received such a high honor in sports.
But as mentioned above, he is by no means the first black man to simply play the sport of baseball. He was primarily the first to cross that line into an all-white league and succeed in doing so. 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 the one player who changed baseball history as the first black baseball player.