A great deal has been written about what Jackie Robinson meant to African Americans when he broke the color barrier of Major League Baseball in 1947. Not much has been said about what it meant to the rest of America.

Jackie Robinson first played in the old Negro Leagues that existed simply because organized baseball was segregated. The Negro Leagues, in their time, developed a reputation for hard-nosed, aggressive baseball.

I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. I became a Philadelphia Phillies fan by default when the Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955.

My first baseball recollection is of a game between the Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers at Shibe Park (later renamed Connie Mack Stadium).

By that time, the Dodgers had a few African American players besides Jackie: Big Don Newcombe, catcher Roy Campanella, and Junior Gilliam.

All these players had come from Negro League teams, and Campanella was a Philadelphia native from the Nicetown neighborhood.

I remember not understanding why Campanella had not been signed by the Phillies. I would later understand that when Jackie Robinson played in his rookie season in 1947, it was the Phillies and their manager, Ben Chapman, who had taunted Jackie with racial slurs.

The fact that the Dodgers were winning National League pennants at the time and the Phillies had only one to show for their efforts was not lost in this kid.

Whenever the Dodgers and Phillies met, Newcombe would be matched with Robin Roberts—ace against ace. They were memorable match-ups, usually decided by one run.

I don’t have specific memories of Jackie Robinson, but I do remember Campanella, both catching and hitting.

I also remember Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks—a trio of African American stars who were in that early generation of ex-Negro League players who were signed by Major League teams.

There is a point to all of this name dropping. They’re all in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

While those names are easy for a baseball fan of those days to remember, I had to read histories of the Negro Leagues to learn the names of Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson, two of the greatest players to ever play the game. I did not realize at the time that Satchel Paige had a long, successful career in the Negro Leagues before being signed by the Cleveland Indians.

Negro League teams beat Major League teams in exhibition games. Satchel Paige was considered the greatest pitcher alive. Josh Gibson was so good that Negro League fans referred to Babe Ruth as the white Josh Gibson while Major League fans referred to Gibson as the black Babe Ruth.

Cool Papa Bell was fast. Of him, Satchel Paige was supposed to have said he could flip the light switch and be in bed before the bulb went out.

Rich stories, but gleaned from a book and not observed first-hand as were the likes of Campy, Newk, Hammerin Hank, “Let’s Play Two” Ernie Banks, or Say Hey.

I came to a conclusion that fans of all-white Major League Baseball were impoverished for not being able to see those old Negro League stars. Segregation was wrong. African American stars were ostracized, left out in the cold. They could not hope to be recognized for their skills in white America.

But white America shortchanged itself. It missed out on half its history.