From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of stories, personal documentaries, and radio movies.

And a long time ago in the 1980s,

I was just starting school at Emerson College in Boston.

I was new to the dorms, and I was in the communal television room which was down in the basement

About to watch the first Red Sox game of the season

Well, it just so happened that there was another group of guys that had just

finished watching the NCAA basketball finals on the TV and as they're

leaving one of the guys says to his friend,

Baseball, that's a white man's game.

As I said, I was new to the dorms,

so I wasn't going to say anything. They just left. But inside my head, I thought

it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. Had these guys never heard of Ricky Henderson, Dwight Gooden, Reggie Jackson for God's sakes?

All men who happened to be playing at that moment in time.

But as it turns out, the guy in my dorm had already seen a reality that I hadn't caught up to yet.

Baseball was a lot blacker back then. It was like a quarter black.

This is writer Donnell Alexander, and he also remembers a time when a quarter of

all major league players were African American instead of the 8% or so now.

Donnell grew up loving baseball,

like a lot of American kids, but he had his own reasons.

My mother was a jealous witness, so we didn't salute the flag.

The 4th of July didn't really have any meaning for me. And baseball was the flag. The 4th of July didn't really have any meaning for me and

...