Nearly 45,000 fans filed into Busch Stadium on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. They watched the Cardinals, all of whom wore jersey No. 42 in honor of the man who broke baseball’s color barrier 69 years earlier, slug a stadium-record six home runs in a 14-3 rout of the visiting Cincinnati Reds.
Earlier that evening, less than five miles away, the predominantly black high school teams from Northwest Academy and Roosevelt played a Public High League game at Minnie Wood Park. They had no scoreboard, an undersized mound and all-dirt infield, a backstop but no fencing, wooden benches but no dugouts, and fewer than 10 spectators watched a 19-10 game won by Roosevelt that at times hardly looked like varsity-level competition.