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When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

Many of the greatest black athletes of all time played baseball for no money and no recognition. I'm just sorry many major league fans never got to see them play, because many of them were awesome.

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me.

I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

When I went to high school, my most passionate desire was to be a professional baseball player. But something within me told me that was not going to happen.

I think I understand why baseball players today are a little standoffish, because the world has changed. You don't know who's trying to take advantage of you, what people really want.

And I'd be lying if I told you that as a black man in baseball I hadn't gone through worse times than my teammates.

I was a baseball fan myself, I wanted to play baseball.

Kids are our future, and we hope baseball has given them some idea of what it is to live together and how we can get along, whether you be black or white.