Baseball's recognition of Negro Leagues 'long overdue' to heirs and supporters

And at 96, Greason, a World War II veteran who fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima and later pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, said he spends “a lot of my time studying the Bible” and preparing to deliver sermons to his Alabama parish each Sunday.But when Greason learned about Major League Baseball’s announcement Wednesday that it was elevating the Negro Leagues to Major League status and recognizing its statistics and records as part of baseball’s history, he had one simple question: What took so long?“It’s long overdue because practically all the guys that played in the Negro Leagues played in the major leagues,” Greason, who was a Barons teammate of Willie Mays and himself later pitched briefly in the majors for the St. Louis Cardinals, told NBC News. It was about being recognized for historical purposes.“Now, for me, it is indeed cause for celebration.”That celebration calls for recognizing and appreciating not just the baseball accomplishments of the approximately 3,400 Negro Leagues players who played from 1920 to 1948 — including Baseball Hall of Famers Mays, Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin and Satchel Paige, to name a few — but acknowledging the adversity and racism Negro Leaguers faced and the social climate in which they played.“My dad would speak so highly of his 'heroes’ with much respect, gratitude and reverence,” said Pamela Irvin Fields, one of Irvin’s daughters.Irvin played with Mays on the New York Giants before the franchise relocated to San Francisco in 1958, and for the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League.