Greg Sankey reminisces on SEC's own integration history after MLB's Negro Leagues celebration in Birmingham

Major League Baseball paid tribute to the Negro Leagues and some of the pioneering Black players in baseball on Thursday evening with a game held at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. And the event taking place just down the road from the SEC offices got commissioner Greg Sankey thinking about the history of the league he runs.

Sankey, who was in attendance for the matchup between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals played at the home of the Birmingham Black Barons, recalled the ceremony the league held in 2017 to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of racial integration in the SEC.

“Well, I was there and am grateful to Rob Manfred, the Major League Baseball commissioner, for an opportunity to be a part of that,” Sankey said on The Paul Finebaum Show on Friday. “My wife Cathy and I both attended. I was reminded in 2017 when we honored the pioneers of our own integration, from 1967, names like Perry Wallace and Nate Northington. We learned right before our dinner to honor the legacy of Perry, his teammate Godfrey [Dillard], Nate Houston, Wilbur [Hackett] and Greg [Page] at Kentucky, those six, that Perry had passed away. Obviously, Willie Mays‘ death just a few days ago. That was on my mind.”

Mays, arguably the greatest baseball player ever and one of the first Black stars of Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson, had died just days before the game. Mays himself played at Rickwood Field as a Black Baron, getting his first professional hit in the ball park.

And all that Rickwood Field represented on Thursday is part of a legacy that isn’t really gone in the pages of history, as Sankey was reminded.

“This morning, I had a conversation with one of our staff whose grandfather played for the Birmingham Black Barons, who lived that life,” Sankey said. “And when you walked into the venue, it was unlike so many of our current venues, because you were taken back in time. There were billboards, there were TV cameras, there were lights, but you felt you’re in a different era, and watching those living members who had played in the Negro League be honored by the members of the Cardinals and the Giants walking with them to the first base and third base line, watching the respect that the current Major League Baseball players showed to those men — and some could stand for the Anthem, some could not. To watch a — the longest living participant in the Negro League throw out the first pitch to his son.”

The living legacy of Rickwood Field is also a reminder of some of the darkest parts of American history, as the Negro Leagues were borne out of racial segregation of the age and the racism and violence associated with it. And the racist attitudes that prevailed at the age and well into the 20th century left scars that many still carry today.

That was epitomized best by former Major League star Reggie Jackson and his impassioned recollection of the pervasive racism he faced.

Speaking on the FOX Sports pregame show with a panel including other former stars like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz, Jackson said it “wasn’t easy” to come back to a place like Rickwood Field.

“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” Jackson said of the treatment he received playing Minor League Baseball for the Birmingham A’s in the 1960s and that he’d never want to do it again.

Sankey took noted of Jackson’s remarks, and said he finds it important to not lose sight of the violence Black athletes were subjected to as we take time now to celebrate and remember those who fought to make the world better.

“But then to see Reggie Jackson in an interview recounting what it was really like,” Sankey said. “I had that conversation. I remember Houston Hogg, who played at Kentucky, talking about how hard it really was, and I think we can miss that sometimes, about how hard it really was for those men at a time of separation and discrimination. So it was encouraging to see that rallying point, to see the willingness of Major League Baseball, to come back to Rickwood Field, to respectfully honor the legacy of Willie Mays, but those who also played in the Negro Leagues who weren’t able to break the color barrier but contributed and gained the honor, was one of those long-lasting memories that I look forward to cherishing and looking back upon.”