Half a century has passed since the demise of Negro League baseball, and of the thousands of men who played on scores of teams, only about 200 survive. Like aging veterans of any vanished pursuit, they have a dwindling hold on the public's memory.
"Pride and Passion: The African-American Baseball Experience" is an effort to spark our consciousness about these players' role in the nation's pastime — and history.
The traveling exhibit starts Wednesday at the Aurora History Museum, which is co-hosting the show with the Aurora Central Library. Sponsored by the American Library Association, the free exhibit runs through Sept. 23, along with several concurrent educational programs.
"Players in the Negro League were some of the most talented and inspiring sports figures of their day," said Jennifer Kuehner, the museum's acting director. "The exhibit tells many remarkable stories of players and teams who were shut out of major-league baseball, but persevered in a sport they loved."
The show, which is arriving from Marion, Ind., before heading to Eugene, Ore., features photographs, lots of info and memorabilia from the heyday of the various leagues, which lasted from the 1870s until the demise of the last one in 1960, 13 years after Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the color barrier. It also explores the post-integration role of blacks in baseball.
The exhibit's arrival in Colorado is appropriate, said Jay Sanford, an area baseball historian who consulted on "Baseball," Ken Burns' 1994 PBS documentary.
Negro League baseball had a strong presence here. The Denver White Elephants flourished from 1915-35, owned by A.H.W. Ross, a black businessman (Five Points' Rossonian Hotel was named after him.) In 1884, the Pueblo Blues played against white teams. In 1885, pitcher Bud Fowler, considered the first black professional player, joined the Pueblo Pastimes.


"Until he got off the train they didn't know he was black," Sanford said. "He was important not just because of his skill but his entrepreneurial ability. He did a lot to advance baseball for blacks."
And The Denver Post Tournament broke ground in 1936, when black and white teams played one another. "That was considered a real breakthrough," Sanford said.
Blacks had created their own professional teams by the late 1870s, and even played on white teams until an 1887 agreement among major league owners to not use black players. So regional leagues were formed, and in 1920, the Negro National League was created. It included teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs and Chicago American Giants.
That started what is viewed as the golden age of black baseball, at least in the years before Jackie Robinson. Players such as Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard and Leroy "Satchel" Paige became legends.
But Robinson's jump to the Dodgers, and the subsequent influx of other black players, led to the decline of the various Negro Leagues. The last surviving outfit, the Negro American League, was largely a barnstorming and de facto minor-league operation until its 1960 demise.
At 79, Mack "The Knife" Pride harbors vivid memories of the Negro Leagues. A pitcher with a wicked arsenal, the Wheat Ridge resident played for the Memphis Red Sox in 1955 and the Kansas City Monarchs in 1956.


Pride knew the legendary player-coach Buck O'Neil, and Hall of Famer Paige, who taught him a sidearm delivery, once said of him: "I ain't never seen anybody that little throw a ball that hard." (For the record, Pride in his prime was 5 feet 10 and a strapping 190 pounds.)
He is philosophical about the racism that led to the Negro Leagues and several generations of deferred dreams.
"I don't like to go back in history," he said on a recent afternoon at his kitchen table, where he leaned forward on a forearm that is still muscular. "I don't even like to back a car up. Racism is still out there, black and white. Let's not be naive about it.
"But you can't hate. It'll eat you alive. I'm not gonna walk around here with hate in my heart over something that happened 60 or 100 years ago."

Pride, who is slated to speak Sept. 18 at the Aurora History Museum, grew up in a baseball-playing family in Sledge, Miss. He had a brother who was also a fine pitcher but an even better singer — country singer Charley Pride.
"I remember we pitched against each other during a game in Memphis at the old Crump Stadium," Pride recalled. "Charley was ragging me before the game, about how he was going to outpitch me. I get up to bat and, wham, I hit a home run off him. Went 398 feet."
By his account, that felt even better than the time he struck out 15 batters in a game.
Pride's major-league aspirations were derailed not so much by race as by an accident. A mishap with a screwdriver ruined his left eye, interfering with his ability to pitch and bat.
But he enjoyed a brief day in the major-league sun.
On June 5, 2008, Major League Baseball held a "draft" of surviving Negro League players as a gesture of reconciliation. Pride was tapped by the Rockies and honored during a game at Coors Field.
Sanford, the baseball historian, has high hopes for the "Pride and Passion" exhibit.
"What I'm counting on seeing is just a good chronology that goes back to the 1870s, when the first black players were paid to play," he said. "It's just such a deep history."
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com

"Pride and Passion: The African- American Baseball Experience" events

Sunday: Kickoff event at 2 p.m. at the Aurora History Museum, 15051 E. Alameda Parkway. Baseball historian Jay Sanford speaks. Museum hours: Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Info: 303-739-6666
Aug. 24: America's Pastime: Baseball program at 2 p.m. Aurora Central Library, 14949 E. Alameda Parkway. Advance registration required: 303-739-6626
Aug. 28: Kids Baseball Day with Rockies mascot Dinger. Aurora History Museum. 2-4 p.m.
Sept. 7: Children's story time at the Aurora History Museum. 10 a.m.
Sept. 18: Mack "The Knife" Pride, former Memphis Red Sox and Kansas City Monarchs player, speaks at the Aurora History Museum. 2 p.m.