Negro Leagues legends honored with baseball cards for MLB at Rickwood Field game

KANSAS CITY -- Former big leaguer and current artist Micah Johnson was tasked with the impossible -- and he stayed awake for over 26 hours at a time on numerous occasions to accomplish it.

His task? Honoring the great Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin and Willie Mays through art on 3-1/2-inch-by-2-1/2-inch trading cards.

On Thursday at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., those six cards were unveiled, along with the first of four 24-foot-by-16-foot cards, to promote the upcoming MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues game on June 20 in Birmingham, Ala.

Paige’s gigantic card was the first to be revealed during the opening stop of an eventual five-city tour that will end in Birmingham ahead of the historic game. The ceremony included local athletes from the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy, who were able to tour the museum and play catch at the adjacent Buck O’Neil Tribute Park, where the unveiling took place.

Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, opened the event by speaking to the importance of the Rickwood Field game and MLB’s continued effort to honor the Negro Leagues.

“This is monumental,” Kendrick said. “The day that will take place at Rickwood will be one of the seminal moments in Negro Leagues history, as the collective eyes of the baseball world will be paying tribute, tipping their cap, to salute the Negro Leagues.”

• Former MVP personally invites Negro Leagues legends to Rickwood game

Johnson created each card’s design by hand with charcoal on canvas. For him, it was a personal undertaking that took months to design and complete -- with each card’s background containing Easter eggs into the players’ personal accomplishments and life. That is, all but Gibson’s, whose background Johnson intentionally left blank to honor the "larger-than-life statistics and person."

Johnson said it was humbling to be included in an event that honors athletes who made such an impact on American history.

“To think about the players that I portrayed in my work, the sacrifices that they went through so I could have a dream, that was really empowering,” said Johnson, who played for the White Sox, Dodgers and Braves from 2015-17. “These players were not just token figureheads, but they were excellent and elite at what they did. The numbers they put up were unbelievable, and then to face the adversity that they went through … it dawned on me how special of human beings these players must have been to still play at that level.”

Willie Mays, the Hall of Famer who turned 93 on May 6, is expected to attend MLB's first regular-season game at the oldest professional ballpark in America (Rickwood Field opened in 1910).

“Only baseball can create these kinds of moments, and it’s why baseball is by far the most romanticized sport of them all,” Kendrick said. “ … If [Mays] is able to appear at Rickwood Field one more time, some 75 years after he last stepped out on that field, you can only imagine what that moment of time will be like.”

The importance of the event is undeniable. Greats such as Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron have also played at Rickwood Field, and soon the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals will too. But June 20 will be more than a game. It’ll be a celebration, and a show of respect for the hundreds of players that used baseball as a way to inspire change throughout the country.

“It would have been easy for them to quit. Our society said they couldn’t do it, and they didn’t succumb to the notion that they were unfit to play the game,” Kendrick said. “ … What you have to admire about this story is, they never allowed that set of social circumstances to kill their love of the game.

“We don’t dwell on the adversity, we know what the adversity was, we focus on what they did to overcome that adversity. And not only did they change the game of baseball, it changed this country for the better … that is the overwhelming message that I hope is going to be conveyed.”